
Book 



IRELAND. 



JL3 



RIGHTS, WRONGS AND REMEDIES. 



A LECTURE 

Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind. 

St. Patrick's Day, 1881 

BY 

HON. EDMUND F. DUNNE, LL. D., 

Ex-Chief Justice of Arizona. 



Irish Land System.— Ireland under Irish Rule.— Ireland under English 

Mis-Rule.— Irish Talent.— The Fraud of 1800, called the "Act of 

Union."— Ireland's Claims upon America.— Ireland's 

Ultimate Success Assured. 



PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST 



-OF- 



THE ILLINOIS STATE LAND LEAGUE, 



-BY 



ie^otih: & oo. 

171 Randolph Street, Chicago. 



PRICE, 25 CEXTS. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



• 



Rooms Illinois State Land League of Ireland. 

Chicago, June 21, 1881. 
Hon. Edmund F. Dunne, Chicago, III. 

Dear Sir: — At a meeting of the Executive Com- 
mittee of the Illinois State Land League, held June 22nd, 
1 88 1, the following resolution was adopted: — 

" Whereas, we regard Judge Dunne's lecture on the 
land and other troubles in Ireland, delivered at Fort 
Wayne, Ind., March 17th, 18S1, as one of the best ex- 
positions of the subject we have seen, abounding in infor- 
mation and explanations which we think important to 
have brought to the attention of the people of thi& 
country, therefore 

Resolved, that the Secretary be instructed to inform 
Judge Dunne that we earnestly desire the publication of 
the lecture in pamphlet form, and will do all in our power 
to aid in its general distribution." 

I have the honor to transmit the same and sincerely 
hope you may be able to gratify the desire of the Com- 
mittee. 

Very respectfully, 

P. W. DUNNE, 

Secretary. 






IRELAND. 



RIGHTS,WRONGSAND REMEDIES 

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: 

I have come before you to-night to try to say some- 
thing about Ireland. I know there are many here to 
whom I can impart no information on that subject. I am 
sure there are many here who were born in Ireland, and 
who remember the abode where, in the land beyond 
the sea, they passed the happy days of childhood, 
the verdant hedge, the smooth, white roads, the bub- 
bling spring, the running brooks, and the larger streams 
where the trout and salmon play; the magic lakes, the 
mossy ruins, the forts and raths, the holy wells and an- 
cient towers and all that sheds an ever living halo of 
beauty around the hallowed spot which first received the 
sacred name of home. 

I doubt not, also, that some are here who remember 
the day when, instead of seeing one of these happy 
homes, they saw, fortunate if it was not their own, the 
blazing thatch, the tumbled wall, the blackened ruin, tell- 
ing of misfortune, eviction, emigration and death. 

I can have but small hope of interesting such persons 
by way of imparting information, but it may please them 



to witness this assemblage, to see by the gathering of 
their descendants here that the children have not forgotten 
the story of their fathers' wrongs ; that even in this far oit' 
land the old traditions are still preserved; the old recollec- 
tions fondly cherished; the old rights rigidly claimed, the 
new remedies carefully considered, and that millions of 
voung Insh-Americans are ready and anxious to hold up 
to England's lip the fatal cup which their fathers in former 
days were forced to drain to the last bitter drop of despair. 

To my young Irish-American friends, I address my- 
self with more of confidence. The field of research in 
Irish matters is so vast, and a meeting such as this is so 
much like an assembling to hear the report of a traveller, 
returned from an interesting land, that however indiffer- 
ent an observer I may have been, I can hardly fail to 
bring back some gleanings of information to which they 
will accord, I hope a not unwelcome reception. 

I know, also, that speaking on this subject, at this 
time and in this countrv, it is mor e than likely that some 
Americans, not of Irish descent, will honor me with their 
attention, and I shall therefore try to make some matters 
intelligible to them which Irishmen; alas! understand only 
too well, without present explanation. 

The Land Question. 

No one can understand the situation of things in 
Ireland without first learning something about the land 
question there, and recognizing that there is not only a 
peculiar feeling in Ireland about tenancy, but that Irish 
tenancy itself is not only unlike anything ever known in 
this country, but different probably from anything now 
known in any country in the world. 

In this country, a man- hires a piece of land and uses 
it for his purpose the same as he hires anything else for 



5 

use. When his lease is out, he hires it again or not as he 
feels inclined. There is no attachment to the land itself, 
merely as land. A farm here or a farm there, is simply 
land, and nothing more. He has rarely held it long 
enough to have acquired any particular affection for it, 
except possibly as a good place to make money on. In 
England a tenant has all of this feeling for his holding, 
with the further feeling often, that he was born on that 
particular land and his fathers and grandfathers for 
generations before him, but all of them recognizing the 
ownership of the land as being in some one else. 

There is another class of tenancies where one who 
once was owner became impoverished and, ceasing to be 
owner, remains as a tenant. Such a tenant, though he 
may repine at his fate, does not blame his landlord for 
claiming the land. The tenant knows that his landlord 
has bought it for a price, acquiring title by fair and honor- 
able means, and that he is warranted in holding and claim- 
ing it as his own. 

There is another class of tenancies where one who 
once was owner is despoiled of his lands by the strong arm 
of an invader or by what he calls unjust act of law ; con- 
fiscation, attainder, outlawry, &c, and yet is left upon the 
land and consents to be a tenant. This situation is gen- 
eraly understood as being the case, with Irish farmers, 
and Americans say it is folly for Irish people to claim 
now that they have, at this present day, any interest in 
the land other than a mere tenancy like a tenancy any- 
where else; they say the Irish people were conquered long 
ago, their lands taken from them, and that though it may 
have been wrong to do so, it has been done, and rights 
of property have grown up under the new arrangement 
which have to be respected, and that the action of the 
present land league, although they may not very loudly 



condemn it, is, strictly speaking, a kind of lynch law. 
This I take it is what Americans say or think about the 
matter, yet not a single one of these various instances of 
tenancy is anything like the tenancy to which Irish far- 
mers have been accustomed until a comparatively recent 
day. 

To exercise the traditional privilege, in speaking of 
Irish matters, we may say that Ireland, was one of those 
queer places where the landlord did not own the land, 
where he whom we would call the landlord was not re- 
cognized in law as having any special interest in the land 
used by the tenant, and where he, whom we would call 
the tenant, was really the owner of the soil he cultivated, 
so far as anybody owned it, and where he, whom we 
would call the landlord, so far as he had a special interest 
in any particular land, was really a tenant at will of 
those whom we would naturally call his tenants. This 
statement may seem a little, or indeed very much con- 
fused, yet I think I can show, in a very few words, 
that it is a tolerably exact statement, even from a legal 
point of view. 

Social Organization. 

Society in general means a number of persons 
associated together for anv temporary or permanent 
object. In the sense I am now speaking of it, it means 
the organization of the whole people of a country for the 
purposes of national existence. 

You all know that society is' not every where organ- 
ized in the particular form in which it now exists general- 
ly in the United States; you know that every separate 
nation has a social organization peculiar to itself in many 
things. In regard to land for instance; in the United 
States one may will his land to any one he pleases, to the 
exclusion of all his children; in England, as to some 



estates, it must all go to the eldest son, in France it must 
all go to all the children equally, sons and daughters; in 
some countries it must all go to the youngest son, in some 
it must go to the daughters; in some it must all go to the 
sovereign, and in some countries the wife and children go 
with it, to the king, as much his absolute property as the 
land itself. So you see the right which a man may have 
in land is not the same in all countries. 

I could multiply instances of the different principles 
on which different social organizations are put together in 
the matter of marriage, military service, personal liberty, 
and so on, but I have cited enough to show what I mean. 
When we speak, therefore, of the principles on which 
society is organized we mean the system adhered to by 
the people as to any or all of these matters, the general 
scheme on which the people have consented to live to- 
gether. 

The Old Irish Social System. 

Society in Ireland was not organized on the principle 
of the family unit as we understand the word family here. 
With us the family is the unit, but family means with us 
a man, wife and children, and the man is the head of the 
family and the result of the labor of the wife and children 
in building up a property is all consolidated in his hands, 
and, justly or unjustly, is held by him to dispose of as he 
pleases. 

In Ireland the family was also recognized as the unit 
of society, but family there meant, in this sense, some- 
thing very different from what it now means with us. 

In Ireland the term family as a legal unit, was taken 
in the patriarchal sense, meaning the head of a family with 
all the existing descendants, all of the same name and 
blood, and often numbering thousands of persons. All 



of these bore the same name, as, O'Neill, O'Brien, &c. r 
but the chief or head of the family was called The 
O'Neill, or The O'Brien, as being the O'Neill or the 
O'Brien, who ruled and who acted for the family in deal- 
ing with strangers, and this distinction is preserved in 
many instances to the present day, as may be seen by the 
names of present and recent Irish Members of Parliament, 
who are officially known now, not as John or James 
O'Donoghue or Patrick or Michael O'Conor, but as The 
O'Donoghue, The O'Conor Don, &c. About the time of 
the English occupation there were some 180 of these or- 
ganized families in Ireland. 

An Irish family in this sense meant all who belonged 
to the tribe and who submitted to the rule of the chief. A 
blood relation of the Chief who left the organization by 
intermarrying elsewhere, or otherwise withdrawing* from 
the tribe, was no longer counted a member of the family. 
A stranger might be affiliated with the tribe by marriage 
and in some other ways and was thenceforth considered a 
member of the family or tribe. 

Each family had its own particular territory, with 
boundaries as carefully defined as those of the coun- 
ties of your State at the present day. A family of 
this kind was called a sept from an Irish word meaning* 
clan, race, or tribe. The territory belonging to the sept 
was called the country of the tribe, as O'Hanlon's coun- 
try, &c. The land was considered the common property 
of the tribe, and different portions of it were assigned to 
the members thereof under direction of the chief, but ac- 
cording to well established laws and usages. Among the 
thousands of people living in one of these countries there 
were always a great number of wanderers, and, some 
times, outlaws from other tribes, also many who were la- 
borers, not entitled to use of the land, directly, on their 



own account. None but those who belonged to the tribe 
were entitled to tribe land, and they were entitled in pro- 
portions according to their antiquity in the sept, and there- 
fore the proofs of descent and relationship were preserved 
in writing as carefully as we now preserve our records of 
title to lands, and for the same purpose, that cf establish- 
ing right of possession to land. Also, every one belong- 
ing to the family of the chief was eligible to the succes- 
sion of the headship by vote of the sept, so that a special 
record of relationship was preserved with more than re- 
ligious care, which explains why it is that numberless 
Irish families of the present day, who do not own a foot 
of land anywhere in the world, have pedigrees, older and 
better attested than those of heads of royal houses in oth • 
er countries. There are twenty million acres of land in 
Ireland ; divided among these 180 septs it would average 
more than 100,000 acres to each sept. The head of the 
organization occupying one of these countries was called 
Lord of the country, as Lord of Hy-manv, &c, some- 
times he was called prince, as Prince of Coolavin, a title 
inherited, borne and recognized down to our own davs- 
This Lord of a country, apportioned the lands among 
the members of the tribe and received a tribute from 
them, and would therefore naturally be called the land- 
lord, and they, his tenants, but, as I said a little while ago 
this Lord did not own the land ; he had no special inter- 
est in the lands used by the holder of the soil. The soil 
belonged to the tribe, as a community, and the so-called 
tenant held the land in his own right, as a member of the 
tribe. 

An Irish Chief. 

Now to explain the apparent paradox I put, that the 
landlord, so far as he had a special interest in any particu- 
lar land, was really as to that land, a tenant at will of 



IO 

those whom we would naturally call his tenants. The 
members of the Irish septs had a royal regard for the per- 
son, the honor and the dignity of their chief. That he 
might sustain that dignity in a becoming manner they as- 
signed to him certain lands for the maintenance and sup- 
port in princely style of himself and his family. So jeal- 
ous were they of his maintaining a proper show of au- 
thority, that it was a part of the written law, that he 
should never appear in public without a retinue, and the 
penalty for disregarding this law was, deprivation of his 
rank. He was obliged to maintain a bard to chant the 
glories of the tribe ; a chronicler to record its actions; a 
brehon or chancellor, to expound the law : various officers 
to preserve the pedigrees of the clan, and a certain num- 
ber of mounted men, knights in waiting, in fact, whatever 
they may be called in name, to defend the rights of the 
sept. To maintain all this state and meet all this ex- 
pense, a large part of the lands of the tribe were 
necessarily assigned to him, but as to those lands it is 
easy to see that he held them really as a tenant from 
the tribe. The members of the tribe also paid to the 
chief a certain annual tribute, proportioned to their 
holdings, not of land alone but of other property, cattle, 
etc., all of which was protected by the chief and his war- 
rior band. So that this tribute was not paid as rent of 
land, but contributed as a tax, to provide means of pro- 
tection. The farmers were no more tenants of the lord 
because they paid this tax, to support the organization 
than owners of land here are tenants, because they pay an 
annual tax to the State. The lord was, as to his lands, a 
tenant at will of the tribe, because he held those lands by 
virtue of being chief, and he held his position as chief at 
the will of the tribe, and many a time in Irish history did 
a tribe depose its chief and put another in his place, al- 



II 



ways however, some other person of the family of the 
chief. The lord of the territory was recognized as hav- 
ing the right to levy special tribute at his pleasure for such 
purposes as he thought proper, new castles, particular 
displays and the like, and so willing wer e they to obey the 
chief that even extraordinary tributes were generally paid, 
which fact, if remembered, will explain something I may 
speak of further on. 

This system of occupying the land was in force in 
Ireland for more than a thousand years, under a body of 
written laws, voluminous and minute almost beyond con- 
ception. This code is now being for the first time put in 
print under the title of the Erehon Laws. Several large 
volumes are published in the original Irish with English 
translation, and more are to come. It has already worked 
a revolution in theories as to the origin of many laws. 
Things supposed to have originated in Germany, England, 
and other places are now shown to have been the subject 
of legislation, criticism and commentary in Ireland, nearly 
three thousand years a<>-o. 

Some Things Explained. 

These facts as to the manner in which such farmers 
occupied their lands for many centuries, make intelligible 
the remark once made in the London Times, never a 
friend of Ireland, in accounting to its readers for the 
strange exhibition of bold defiance on the part of Irish 
farmers, that these Irish, so-called, tenants, were not and 
never had been peasants in the continental sense, bu t 
were and always had been gentlemen as the word gentle- 
men is understood in England, that is, that under their own 
government they had occupied their lands not by permis- 
sion of some present or absent lord, but by absolute right 
as themselves, lords of the soil, and had therefore all the 



12 

natural boldness which personal independence breeds and 
confirms. 

This also explains why Irishmen in Ireland lived for 
generation after generation in one certain place, each one 
dwelling in his own territory, because, to leave his terri- 
tory was to separate himself from his tribe, with small 
chance of acquiring anything like equal social standing in 
any other tribe. 

It also explains their powerful attachment not to land 
in general but to the lands of their particular territory. 
They will make unheard of sacrifices to retain the land 
which has been in their families for unnumbered genera- 
tions, but once uproot them from that, and set them adrift 
in the world, and they have no more affection for mere 
land than is possessed by men in general, and this answers 
the question, so often asked, "Why is it that Irishmen, so 
furious to possess the soil in their own conntry, when they 
come to America care so little to go on the land?" 

It also explains why there is a peculiar attraction for 
them to remain in the great cities of this country, because 
there they meet with fellow-men of their sept, fellow 
exiles in a land of strangers, and, of course, it is pleasant- 
er to remain there, where they can meet and talk togeth- 
er of the old times at home, and consult as to how they 
may come to their own again, rather than to strike out 
separately for a lonely life in the wilds of the west. 

It explains, too, why being thus gathered together^ 
broken in fortune, adrift in a foreign land, everything new 
and strange to them, they are led into some excesses 
which were never particularly characteristic of them at 
home, and which are often a clog to their advancement 
here. 

It explains, too, why the late scheme of colonization 



13 

by them in organized bodies, so that they may be on the 
land and still be together, and. within sound of their pas- 
tor's voice is having such a great success. 

It explains, too, why the history of Ireland shows so 
much internal conflict, so different from that of other na- 
tions. It was in fact an aggregation of small separate 
nations, each one outgrowing its boundaries, always crowd- 
ing upon, and often trespassing upon those adjoining. 

It explains also a certain difficulty there has always 
been experienced in getting Irishmen to act together har- 
moniously as a whole. They were never organized as a 
nation in anything like the way in which modern nations 
are organized. The individual members of a tribe prac- 
tically never recognized any authority but that of their 
chief. They tilled their lands or went forth to battle just 
as their chief directed, and whenever the Chief said, -'Let's 
go home," home they went. 

When a number of Irishmen are assembled in this 
country, and some one undertakes to direct their action, 
the slightest sign of decision of character on his part is 
often looked upon as an assumption by him of the power 
of a chief giving command to his clan, and as his audi- 
ence is made up, not of men of his tribe, but of represen- 
tatives of many tribes, there are sure to be some persons 
present who, feeling they are chiefs in their own right, 
rebel at once from such, as they think, attempted control, 
so that it has become almost a proverb now that 
where Irishmen abound contention prevails. 

They will, however, gradually outgrow all of this 
quality that is seriously objectionable. A proper amount 
of individual independence is, in this country, particularly 
desirable, rather than otherwise. 



x 4 
Political Divisions. 

Ireland was divided into four provinces, each one 
having its king. The chiefs recognized no authority 
directly, except that of their provincial king. Of course, 
the provincial king was guided in his policy mainly by the 
advice of the more powerful chiefs. Here, again, was 
cause of internal war on account of conflict of interests 
of these several provinces, such as even calmer blood than 
the Celtic, would not have been able to always avoid, and 
which was not merely parallelled, but I may say surpassed, 
among the supposed colder-blooded Anglo-Saxons, in the 
days of the Heptarchy, when they had seven provinces, 
each with its own king, just as in Ireland. 

These four provinces yielded a certain amount of 
allegiance to a supreme king, called always the Monarch 
of Ireland, and they set apart a certain amount of land 
from each province, at the point where the four provinces 
joined in the centre of the island, for the Monarch's use, 
called the ancient Province of Meath, now divided into 
East and West Meath. The provincial kings paid tribute 
to the monarch, the same as the members of a tribe did 
to their chief. 

The English Invasion. 

This is the system that was in vogue for at least a 
thousand years, when the English began to come into the 
country in 1172. Now we are coming near the time of 
the confiscations. But it was not at this time that the 
Irish, farmers began to have trouble about their lands. 
When a hurricane sweeps across a country, it is the tall 
and spreading trees which first suffer from the blast ; the 
humbler plants which throve beneath their shelter remain 
for a while undisturbed. The great chiefs who led the 
opposing hosts against the invader, and lost, were the 
ones who suffered first. Their possessions were taken 



i5 

and the English lords put in their place, but the so-called 
tenants were not disturbed except, to some extent, within 
the area of the English pale. Neither was their right in 
the land, as they claimed it, questioned. The new Eng- 
lish lords outside the pale had neither power nor inclina- 
tion to introduce the English system of rent paying. 
They preferred the larger power of the Irish chiefs, un- 
der Irish law, to levy tribute when they liked, and many 
of them assumed Irish manners and Irish dress in order to 
cause themselves to be more fully accepted as successors 
of the Irish chiefs, and this was one cause why English 
laws were made forbidding the adoption of Irish customs 
by English settlers. 

Irish chiefs were invited by the English government 
to surrender their Irish titles, both titles of nobility and 
titles to land, and take in exchange English titles both of 
land and of nobility. Some of them did so, but were 
often compelled by the people to disclaim the English title 
of nobility and be known only as of old, as Lords of Irish 
countries or Chiefs of Irish septs. 

In considering the matter of the difficulty there was 
in establishing English laws and customs in Ireland, it 
should be remembred that they were not only customs 
foreign to and radically different from those established in 
Ireland from time immemorial, but that they were also 
the customs of a conqueror and therefore especially odious 
for that if for no other reason, being thereby a badge of 
servitude; also that the Irish were a different race from 
the English, as different from them as the French are 
from the Germans; also that they differed in language; 
the Irish language differing not only from the English 
more than the French does from the German, but differ- 
ing radically from all other languages now spoken. The 
Irish people would not try to learn English, and tc this 



i6 

•day in many parts of Ireland, English is, to many Irish 
people, a foreign and unintelligible tongue, and I hope it 
may ever remain so. Americans notice a peculiar oddity 
in the speech of many Irishmen in talking English. This 
does not consist so much in the so-called brogue as in the 
fact that these men are simply putting English words 
together according to the Irish mode of constructing a 
sentence. 

It must be remembered also that the language so 
cherished by the Irish people was not an unwritten -patois, 
but was an inflected, original language, of higher grade 
than the English language of even the present day, and 
that it had been the language of poetry, philosophy and 
history in Ireland, a thousand years before the father of 
English poetry penned the lines which not one in a thous- 
and now can read. 

The First Great Change. 

For four hundred years after the so-called English 
conquest of Ireland, that is from 1172 to 1603, the lands 
of Ireland were held in accordance with the old Irish 
laws. Under James I., shortly after 1603, an attempt was 
made to introduce the English system of holding land. 
In changing the tenure, three inquiries were made. 

First, how much of the estate was held by the 
Irish chief as reserved for his own use? 

Second, how much was held by the so-called tenants? 

Third, what was the yearly value in money of the 
tributes paid by the so-called tenants to the chief? 

These three points being settled, the lands held by 
the chiefs were granted to the landlord outright, but 
the lands held by the so-called tenant were not taken 
from the tenant, that is, his ownership of them was not 
questioned, but, an estimate was made of what the various 



i7 

tributes which the chief might exact during the year 
would be worth in money, and the occupant was adjudg- 
ed to pay that amount in money annually to the new lord. 
Be it remembered that the new lord was not necessarily 
an Englishman, nor even a new man. What England 
was trying to do at this time was to break up the Irish 
system of holding lands, and substitue for it as near an 
approach as possible to the English system. To get this 
system adopted very great inducements were offered to 
the Irish chiefs, such as before stated, namelv, not only 
an English title to their lands but also an English title of 
nobility. The English authorities had many objects in 
trving to introduce this policy. 

First, they wished to break up the Irish tribal system 
so as to break the power of the chiefs. 

Second, they were willing, for that purpose and at 
that time, to recognize the right of the, so-called, tenant 
farmers, but in reality farmer owners, and guarantee their 
independence of the chief, so that they would not feel 
under any obligation to take up arms with him at his 
bidding. 

Third, they wished to get the chiefs in their power 
by getting them to take a British title and acknowledge 
British allegiance, so that on the slightest sign of disloy- 
alty they could confiscate their lands. 

Fourth, they wished to thus pave the way for an 
English occupation of the land. 

Finally, every introduction of British law of any 
kind in place of an Irish law on the same subject was a 
gain to that extent in anglicising Ireland. 

Wot Rent but Tribute. 

I wish to emphasize the fact that the sum of money 
the farmer owners of the small holdings were to annually 



i8 

pay was not considered a rent of land, for, their owner- 
ship of that was recognized, and the tribute was assessed 
on cattle as well as on land, but it was simply a commuta- 
tion of an ancient tribute and reducing to a sum certain 
what was before an uncertain tax. Be it remembered 
that when the settlement was made from 1603 to 1641, 
whenever a change was made by an Irish sept submitt- 
ing to English authority, the English government did not 
grant to the new lord all the territory formerly held by 
the sept, and leave the people as tenants of the lord, but 
an actual survey was made of the territory, the portion 
found in possession of the lord or chief as his own par- 
ticular land, and that only, was mapped out, as the new 
lord's land, and a grant was made him of that and only 
that land, except there was added to it a right to collect 
from the occupants of other land of the territory an an- 
nual payment, not as rent of land belonging to the lord 
but as a commutation of an ancient tribute. 

This explains why the landlord in Ireland never 
makes any improvements on the lands of his so-called 
tenants. He never thought of doing so in the first in- 
stance, nor did any one expect him to do it, for it was well 
known that he was not the owner of the land and had no 
right to enter upon it for any purpose except to collect, 
not his rent, but his tribute. 

The Cromwellian Settlement. 

Then came the rebellion of 1641, and the Crom- 
wellian settlement, with a paper confiscation of all Irish 
rights in land. This confiscation became a reality as to 
most of the Irish chiefs, but never became an actual fact 
as to the mass of the people. The chiefs and their families 
were scattered to the four quarters of the globe, some to 
die in exile, broken in heart and health and spirit, others to 
mount to the highest pinnacle of fame in the countries of 



*9 

their adoption. The mass of the people, in spite of the 
paper decree, still retained their ancient holdings, but with 
this difference, that the landlords now began to disregard 
the tenant's rights. The old chiefs with their warrior 
retinues were gone. The people had rebelled; they had 
no longer even the letter of the law to protect them ; they 
stood naked before the oppressor, yet, disarmed and dis- 
franchised as they were, there was not power enough in 
the English government to drive them from the land; 
they clung to it with death-like grasp and it was found 
impossible to do anything with them except to let them 
remain and trust to rack-rents, evictions, famines, and 
penal laws for their extermination. 

And now the landlord smote the people with a two- 
edged sword. 

First, he held to the settlement of James I., in that 
he should not make improvements on the land, not being 
its owner. 

Second, he held to the Cromwellian settlement, in 
that the occupants had no rights in the land, and could be 
rack-rented and evicted at the landlords' will, and thus 
as between the upper and the nether millstone were the 
Irish people ground to powder. 

Tenant Right. 

Those who have been patient enough to follow me 
through this dry legal disquisition will comprehend now 
what this phrase of Irish tenant right means, as under- 
stood and claimed by Irish farmers. Tenant right as 
claimed by them does not mean a right to be tenants in 
the ordinary sense; it means a recognition of their ancient 
and present rights in the land; a right to occupy the land 
not as tenants, out as owners, subject to no rent what- 
ever as rent proper, but only to the payment of a proper 



20 

annual sum in lieu of a tribute which it was always their 
duty to pay, and subject also, they now claim, to their 
right to extinguish this tribute upon the payment of a pro- 
per sum in hand, the amount of the tribute to be deter- 
mined now on the same principle that it was first deter- 
mined, making proper allowance for the difference in 
values between the present and the former times, and the 
amount required for extinction of tribute to be determined 
by ordinary commercial calculation as to what amount of 
present capital is equal to a certain annual interest. 

Tenant right in Ireland means a recognition of rights 
enjoyed by the Irish farmers for more than a thousand 
years before the English came into Ireland, recognized by 
the English authorities for more than 400 years after their 
invasion, and recognized to this day by English landlords 
as to one-half of the compact, that of not making im- 
provements on the land because they were not owners of 
it. To compel them to recognize it as to the other half, 
qualified ownership in the occupant, is the object of the 
present National Land League of Ireland. For the ex- 
planation of the separation of the land of the chief from 
the land of the tenant, in the grants to landlords on the 
change from Irish to English tenure, I am indebted to the 
interesting researches of Mr. Seebohm, as set forth in the 
19th Century for January, 1881. 

As to the rights of the old chiefs and their descen- 
dants, that is another question, a question which the 
Land League does not profess to discuss. 

Practical Application. 

Now of course my practical American friends will say 
what particular application do you make of all this? This 
may be very interesting as a matter of historical research, 



21 

but what practical bearing has it on this anti-rent move- 
ment? 

It seems to me that these historical facts as to the 
manner in which the Irish people have for ages past I een 
holding their lands shed a flood of light upon the contest 
now going on between the so-called tenants in Ireland and 
the so-called landlords. It shows that the Irish tenant 
farmers are not mere highwaymen holding bv force the 
property of others and refusing to pay anything but what 
they like for the use of it. When persons who are in 
law and in fact nothing but mere tenants of land, with no 
right whatever of their own in the land, no right or title 
in the land but the privilege they have had from the own- 
er thereof to occupy it, when such persons, except in an 
extreme case to which I will hereafter advert, conspiring 
together, rise up against the proprietor and refuse to pay 
any rent except such as they themselves choose to fix, it 
is without doubt, robbery and, when accompanied with 
resistance to law, is riot, insurrection and possibly rebell- 
ion. The exception to which I referred and which I will 
more fully develope further on, is where the land is the 
only means the people have by which to sustain life, and 
then by the great higher law of nature, the right of self- 
preservation, they may, as against any and every one, 
take so much of the surface of God's footstool as is nec- 
essary for their support. 

The condition of things in Ireland with regard to 
land is such that even by this law of nature, this duty of 
self-preservation, not only as expounded by Irishmen but 
as declared by all the great authorities of the jus gentium 
in Europe, those of England itself not excepted, the Irish 
people are justified in rising in revolt against the existing 
law and demanding that the so-called rights of landlords 
be cut down, restricted, remodeled, re-adjusted, so that it 



22 

shall not be in their power to take from the tillers of the 
soil such a proportion of its products that the producer 
shall not have left him sufficient to sustain life. There is 
no such thing known in law as an absolute ownership of 
land, in the sense that there may be absolute ownership 
in other property. Land is as much the gift of God to 
man and is as necessary in one sense to his existence as 
is air, and water, and the glorious light of day. Land is 
not as free to man as light and water and air, only because 
it is not so essentially necessary to his existence, but, in 
so far as it happens at any time or place to become as 
essentially necessary then, so far, it is as essentially free. 
These are not of the doctrines called communistic, as the 
word communistic is now generally understood. They 
.are the doctrines of grave and learned commentators and 
are acknowledged to be a part of the very basis of all 
organized society. 

On this primary right, the Irish people, because of 
the destruction by the British government of all other 
means of support in Ireland except from the land, and 
because of the limited amount of land there, are justified 
in demanding and by all means in their power enforcing 
the demand, that tenure of land shall be made compatible 
with tenure of life. In some parts of Ireland that is not 
the case now. In some parts the whole product of the 
land will not pay the rent demanded, so that if the tenant 
should give all the product to the landlord, he would have 
left, not sufficient to support life, but would have left ab- 
solutely nothing whatever. How do such people live 
now, do you ask? I'll tell you how. The man puts in 
the crop in the spring and then goes forth an exile from 
his native land, goes to a foreign country, toils like a gal- 
ley slave in the land of the stranger, separated from the 
partner of his bosom, the joy of his life, unwelcomed at 



eve by the smile of his wife or the prattle of his chil- 
dren, leaving them all during his absence exposed to, he 
knows not what, of sorrow and hardship and insult, toils 
thus through all the heat of summer, and gathers thereby 
a handful of bright coins, to be given on his return, to 
whom ? to his wife, to buv her comforts for the coming win- 
ter and to clothe his little darlings who have vainly called 
for him in his absence? No ! It goes to pay a rent de- 
manded for a paltry piece of ground the whole product 
of which will not pay the hire demanded for its use. You 
must not tell men they have not a right to rebel against 
laws which operate so infamously. A government which 
does not govern better than that has no claim to the al- 
legiance of any one who suffers by such neglect. 

When I speak here or in any other part of this ad- 
dress of the right of the people to resort to any and every 
means to secure their rights, I wish to be understood 
always as meaning the right to exhaust all means includ- 
ed in what is called civilized warfare, a somewhat elastic 
term, I know, but one which has, nevertheless, a certain 
generally understood signification ; also that the right to 
resort to these means arises only when no other honora- 
ble means will suffice, and where there is reasonable 
ground to believe that they will be successful. 

All of this is outside, however, of the application of 
the historical facts which I have been reciting. The first 
practical application of those facts is this, that they show 
that the so-called tenant farmers of Ireland stand in a dif- 
ferent position in this dispute with the so-called landlords 
from that of simple tenants as against actual landlords. 
The Irish farmers have a certain feeling of ownership in 
the lands they occupy, and we can see now why they 
have this feeling and where it comes from. Thev have a 
real, bona fide, subsisting, inherited right to remain on 



2 4 

those particular lands and occupy them in their own way, 
no matter whether it would be more profitable or not fof 
some one else to have those lands occupied in a different 
way, and there is no moral and should be no le«-al n'o-ht 
in any one, to have the power to demand and collect & 
rent or tribute for the use of those lands any more than 
their use, for the purposes to which the occupants desire 
to put them, is reasonably worth. That is all the claim 
that the Land League now' makes. It is a claim which 
but a few years ago was spurned with contempt from the 
Halls Of Westminster. It is a claim which the govern- 
ment at Westminster now pretends to grant. What has 
caused this great change in the attitude of the British 
Government ? You know very well what it is. It is 
the working of that great League of which } 7 ou here form 
a not unimportant part. But some ask how far do the Irish 
people propose to push the application of these principles, 
these claims of the tenants to a qualified ownership of the 
land. The English authorities say, granting that all of 
this is true, those transfers you speak of were made a 
long time ago, the tenants of those days were ousted 
from their holdings, and the different farms have had their 
boundaries obliterated and the whole has become so 
incorporated and mixed up with the land which did, with- 
out doubt, legally belong to the landlord that you could 
not pick out now, and identify the tenant holdings proper 
if you tried ? To this we answer that there is a maxim 
in English law, stated by that authority so dear to Eng- 
lishmen, that great commentator on the English constitu- 
tion, the so-called immortal Blackstone, that if one will- 
fully intermixes the goods of another with his own so 
that the several portions can no longer be distinguished, 
the English law gives the entire property, without any 
accounting, division, or valuation whatever to him whose 



original dominion was first unlawfully invaded. Of course 
I am not going to say as a lawyer, that, at present under 
civil rule I would rely much on that maxim as settling the 
present dispute, but I am quite free to say, as a Land 
Leaguer, that if the British government refuses to settle 
this question peaceably and throws us into revolution that, 
in my opinion, that doctrine of law would be amply suf- 
ficient for revolutionary purposes. 

We also make the further answer that it is not true- 
that the tenants were ousted from their former holdings, 
and have drifted no one knows whither, and that there is 
no one now left to claim their rights. As a rule the ten- 
ants were not ousted until days so recent that they can 
still, if necessary, prove their claims. I can show }'ou 
farms in Ireland where the tenants have leases of the 
same ground they now occupy, three hundred years old, 
written on cow-skin, leases which when unrolled will 
cover an ordinary dining-room table, and those, not of 
large estates, but only of small tenant farms. Do the 
landlords respect those leases to-day ? No ! No more 
than they do in a case where a man cannot prove his 
right. I can show you tenant farmers living in stone 
houses built by the ancestors of the present occupants'in 
the time of the Danes, nine hundred years ago. Are these 
rights in the land respected ? No ! All are by the land- 
lords classed alike as people with no rights landlords are 
bound to respect. Then the farmers say if this is to be 
the rule, we too will class all alike, we will claim that all 
of us who are in possession are rightfully there, and are 
the rightful heirs of all the privileges and immunities of 
the original occupants, and we will insist that this dispute 
shall be adjusted on that basis, not alone because of those 
rights, for there is reason enough for it outside of them 
but we want the world to know and understand that in. 



26 

the claim we are now making we are not acting the part 
of revolutionists, robbing the rich to benefit the poor, but 
are simply claiming our own rights in the soil, our an- 
cient, established, inherited rights in certain determined 
pieces and parcels of land, rights dear to us for their in- 
trinsic value as means of support at the present day, but 
a thousand times more dear by reason of the family asso- 
ciations which generations of occupancy have endowed 
them with. 

I have cited these historical facts, not so much to 
justify as to explain the attitude of the tenant farmers in 
Ireland. The absolute legal justification of their action I 
will speak of further on, but however much we may urge 
reasons entirely independent of these historical facts, he 
who ignores these facts, in dealing with this question, will 
never be able to comprehend the action of the Irish peo- 
ple in Ireland with regard to the occupation of land. Men 
form systems and are then to a great extent formed by 
them, and when a people have lived under a peculiar 
social system for more than two thousand years, as the 
Irish people have done, and when one of the most marked 
effects of that system was the retention ot particular 
lands in the same family, generation after generation, for 
century after century of that time, it cannot be expected 
that they will quietly consent to become tenants at will, 
where they have so long believed themselves to be own- 
ers in fee, that they will without murmuring consent to 
be slaves of an alien and infamous law as to the holding 
of lands of which they for ages past have been the sole 
.and rightful lords. 

Ireland, under Irish Rule. 

Such was the old Irish system as to occupation of 
land. How did Ireland prosper under that system? 



27 

In the archives of Irish academies, in tne alcoves of old 
monasteries, in libraries at Oxford, London, Paris, Brussels 
and Copenhagen as also in the great collection at the Vati- 
can, ancient Irish manuscripts, are found, older than any of 
any other living language, giving accounts of battles fought 
in Ireland more than two thousand years ago with swords 
of finest temper, shields embossed with silver and helmets 
wrought in gold, and, day by day, delvers in Irish earth 
find, even now, proofs that the old accounts are true. 

The Roman legions carried their conquering eagles 
over almost every land then known, off to the mountains 
of Asia, down to the wilds of Africa, up to the forests of Ger- 
many, across the slopes of sunny France, over the English 
Channel and into the heart of ancient Britain, where they 
lived and ruled for more than live hundred years, yet 
throughout all that time there was one fair land they never 
set hostile foot upon, the sacred soil of Erin's Isle. 

It cannot be supposed that the ancient Romans who 
had traversed all lands and crossed all seas could live side 
by side with Ireland for five hundred years without covet- 
ing its possession. That they never even tried to possess 
it shows that throughout that period the Irish people had 
cultivated the art of war as well as enjoyed the delights of 
peace. 

You know how far back it seems now when we speak 
of the days of Charlemagne, yet those were the times the 
Irish were fighting the Danes, then masters of England and 
scourges of Europe, yet the resources of Ireland were 
even then, so well developed under Irish rule that she was 
able to withstand their assaults for two hundred years, till 
in the eleventh century they were finally routed and con- 
quered by an Irish host on the field of Ciontarf. 
Irish Manufactures. 

In the twelfth century, the woolen goods of Ireland, 



28 

which had been celebrated before the christian era for ex- 
cellence of texture and beauty of color, were still sought 
for in every port of Europe, 

At the opening of the sixteenth century, the native 
Irish had iron works in the centre and south and west of 
Ireland. 

In the seventeenth century, glass works were started. 

In the eighteenth century, silk and cotton manufac- 
tories were established, and before the eighteenth century 
there had been published in Ireland over 20,000 volumes 
of books, and there are old Irish manuscript works there 
yet, not only unpublished but untranslated, sufficient to 
make 20,000 more. 

If Ireland had been left to herself and her old Irish 
laws, with the lead she had in cotton, wool and silk, with, 
her coal and iron, her grassy hills and fertile plains, 
her magnificent harbors, her forests of oak for ships, her 
western fishermen for sailors, her hardy sons for workers,, 
her brilliant writers, her wonderful orators, her sagacious 
statesmen, her unrivalled soldiers, her noble prelates, with 
the purity of her faithful women, and the heroism of her 
gallant men, she would now be a country of twenty 
millions of people, the superior of Portugal, Denmark,, 
Switzerland, Norway and Sweden, the peer, of Bel- 
gium and Holland and the rival of England. Ah! there's 
the rub. The rival of England! It was the old struggle 
of Carthage and Rome. Delenda est Carthago. Let 
Ireland be destroyed. There is the explanation of the 
mystery of 700 years. You may strike men down in 
battle, you may mock at their religion, you may despise 
their race, but so long as you do not touch their right to. 
live where God has placed them', their right to profit by 
their labor, their right to manage their own affairs, th y 



2 9 

can forget your victories in war, tolerate your differences in 
religion and laugh at your boast of blood. But deny them 
freedom, den}' them food, deny them government, and 
they'll hate you till they die. 

In the natural order of things so far as geographical 
location, natural resources, and maritime facilities are con- 
cerned, these spots of land on the western coast of Europe 
should be the Irish and not the British Isles; the governing 
power should be the Irish and not the British Parliament. 
The London of to day should be, not at the back door of 
England, fifty miles up the sluggish Thames, but around 
the bright shores of Dublin Bay, or on the pleasant waters 
■of the River Lee. Why is it not so? Oh! it is because 
nations are not made by geographical location, nor natural 
resources, nor maritime facilities, but bv the darins" irenius 
of bold determined men. England had men of genius to 
foresee, and of iron heart to execute. It was not the 
Saxons who injured Ireland. So long as none but Saxons 
ruled in England, Ireland had nothing to complain of. Did 
yon ever hear of Irishmen complaining of Edward the 
Confessor or of Edmund or of Athelstan? No ! And this 
Is why the ill will of Ireland is not directed against the 
great body of English people, who are Saxons, but against 
the heartless rulers of that country, who are of quite a 
different race. The Anglo-Saxons lost control of England 
in 1066, and never regained it. The Normans, under 
William the Conqueror, captured England then, and it has 
been ruled by foreigners ever since. Did you ever hear 
one of the ruling class in England to-day admit that he was 
an Anglo-Saxon? Dont they all claim to have come over 
with William the conqueror? 

TSie Angevins. 

But neither was it from the Normans proper that 
the troubles of Ireland began. There was a tribe came 



3° 

after William the Conqueror worse than the Normans, 
the Angevins, and they were the devils incarnate who 
began the present troubles of the Irish people. They 
were descended from one of those moral monsters with, 
which God in his wrath sometimes afflicts the world, from 
the infamous Fulc the Black, wife murderer of Anjou. 
Henry II. was his representative in England. This was 
the man who began English rule in Ireland. According" 
to the accounts of even English historians, he was a devil 
incarnate if there ever was such a thing in this world, 
and his end as told by English writers was so fearfully 
horrible, not from physical torture, for no man touched 
him, so fearfully horrible I say that I would not dare 
shock you to-night by a repetition of the blasphemies 
which preceded it. 

You have heard of a King of England who, enraged 
because he could not chastise the people of Wales as he 
wished, turned upon the hostages he held, the sons and 
daughters of the noblest families of Wales and rooted 
out the eyes of the youths and amputated the ears and 
noses of the daughters. This was the king who did it. 

You have heard of St. Thomas A'Beckett, who was 
murdered in the house of God while participating in the 
vesper chant ; stricken down within the chancel, his brains 
dug out with a sword and smeared upon the altar. This 
King Henry was the instigator of the murder. 

There were four sons of a King of England once. 
One of them, afterwards Richard I. of England, said : 
" The custom of our family is that the son shall hate the 
father ; our destiny is to detest each other. This is our 
heritage which we shall never renounce. From the devil 
we came ; to the devil we will return." These were the 
sons of this King Henry. 



3 1 

There was a King of England once who said : "Ac- 
cursed be the day on which I was born, and accursed of 
God be the children I leave behind me." That was also 
this same King Henry. 

But there was another malediction he uttered before 
his death, more fearful than any of these. A malediction 
which I dare not repeat to you. I will not say go to the 
histories and find it. You can find it if vou look for it, 
but you cannot read it without horror, nor afterwards 
think of it without terror. The rule of these Angevin 
devils lasted about 300 years. This Henry II. was the 
first of the brood ; the crooked-back tyrant, Richard III., 
was the last. I have said that England had men of gen- 
ius to foresee, and iron hearts to execute. These were 
some of them, and all English rulers of Ireland since, in 
everything relating to Ireland, seem to have inherited 
their cruelty of character, determining every Irish ques- 
tion not upon any principle of natural justice but solelv 
upon the cold blooded policy of how most to injure Ire- 
land and prevent her in any way rivalling England. Do 
my American friends smile a little at this, thinking it a 
Celtic exaggeration ? Ah ! if they do, it only proves 
how necessary it is for us to show them what enormities 
have been perpetrated upon the Irish people, under the 
forms of English law. Did you ever hear of the 

Penal Laws 
In force in Ireland down to a late dav ? King 
Henry was not more enraged by Welsh resistance than 
his successors were by Irish obstruction. King Henry 
was not more cruel to his Welsh hostages than his suc- 
cessors were to their Irish subjects. They forbade to the 
Irish people all liberty of religion; forbade them to 
speak the Irish language, to have Irish books, or to in- 
struct Irish children. It was declared by these laws that 



3 2 

the life of an Irishman, or the honor of an Irishwoman 
might be taken at will, anywhere outside the pale, that is, 
anywhere over fifty miles from Dublin ; and to mark 
their hatred of the Irish race, they enacted that if an 
Englishman dared to marry an Irishwoman, he was to be 
half hanged, his heart cut out before he was dead, his 
head struck off and his lands forfeited to the crown. Do 
you ask whether these laws had not been left simply a 
dead, letter on the Statute book ? Many of them were 
not only in force but enforced clown fo 1829. 

This Henry II. was the first English king who 
claimed to govern Ireland, and he did it on the pretence 
of wishing to improve the morals of the people. He knew 
that the deepest, strongest love which the Irish people 
had, was for their old Catholic faith, and that they had 
unmeasured respect, love and affection for the holy Father, 
visible head of their Church. Now, how do you suppose 
he applied that knowledge ? He forged a Bull, as com- 
ing from the Pope, giving to him the sovereignty of Ire- 
land, and calling upon the people of Ireland to render 
him allegiance. 

Thus the very beginning of English rule in Ireland 
was built on a foundation of fraud, and ever since, it has 
been continued by fraud, treachery, robbery, rapine, 
murder, slaughter and every other crime known in the 
calendar. 

Irish Industries Destroyed. 

I have shown you that many kinds of manufactures 
were established in Ireland long ago. Do you want to 
know why they are not there now? I'll tell you why. 

I said a little while ago that if Ireland had been left 
alone she would now be the rival of England. That was 
not exactly the correct way to put it. Ireland had been 



33 

the instructor of England in arts and manufactures for a 
thousand years. England had tried to become the rival 
of Ireland in these things and had failed, down to within 
two years of the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 
the year 169S, the manufacturers of England, through 
the medium of parliament, presented a petition to the king 
representing that the woolen factories of Ireland were 
developing to that extent that they were drawing to Ireland 
English subjects with their families and servants, in such 
numbers that it threatened to injure the trade of England, 
to diminish the value of land there and to seriously decrease 
the population of the Island. 

Is not this very much like what I said a little while 
ago that if natural laws had been allowed to operate, the 
city of London as it is now developed as to wealth and ex- 
tent, would be found, not in England, but in Ireland? 

Kings do not often answer petitions, but the king in 
this case was William 111., who had been in Ireland, and 
knew, the resources of the country and the energies of the 
people. He answered the petition and the answer was 
the death knell of Irish industry and, necessarily, of Irish 
progress. His answer was: "I shall do all that in me 
lies to discourage the woolen trade of Ireland * * * 
and promote the trade of England." 

The same policy was pursued as to every other art 
and industry in Ireland. The consequence was they were 
all destroyed. As our gallant Meagher puts it: "The 
cotton manufactories of Dublin have been destroyed; the 
stuff and serge manufactories have been destroyed; the 
calico looms of Balbriirg'an have been destroved; the 
flannel manufactories of Rathdown have been destroyed, 
the blanket manufactories of Kilkennv have been de- 
stroyed; the camlet trade of Bandon which produced 



34 

£100,000 a year has been destroyed, the worsted manu- 
factories of Waterford have been destroyed ; the rateen 
and frieze manufactories of Carrick-on-Suir have been 
destroyed; one business alone thrives and flourishes, that 
favored and privileged and patronized business, the manu- 
facture of Irish coffins." 

That is the reason, and the only reason why the 
Imperial Parliament sits to-day in London and not in 
Dublin. That is the reason and the only reason why the 
destinies of the British Isles are controled to-day by 
Englishmen and not by Irishmen." 

Does any one say that this is absurd; that England 
had ruled and conquered Ireland centuries before the 
time of this woolen business, and that this regulation was 
a matter of commerce and choice of residence only; that 
if the trade had been left in Ireland the only difference 
would have been that the English master would have 
resided there instead of in England? Not so. In 1698 
England had not conquered Ireland; in less than a century 
after that time England was compelled to recognize the 
national independence of Ireland, and, if Irish manufactures 
had not been stamped out of existence by Stafford in 1636 
by William III, in 1698, and regularly by others after, 
the Act of Union of 1800 would not have been an Act of 
Union of Ireland to England, but of England to Ireland. 

Until the accursed act of Union was carried by the 
most atrocious frauds ever perpetrated, the King of Eng- 
land governed Ireland by virtue of his Irish crown, sep- 
arate entirely from his English authority. Until the time 
of Henry VIII, no English King claimed to be King of 
Ireland, but simply lord thereof. The Union as passed in 
1800 recognized the title as King of Great Britain and 
Ireland ; as it might have been passed, if the industries of 



35 

Ireland had not been strangled, the title would have been 
King of Ireland and Great Britain. 

Irish Talent. 

Will any one say that we had not the men to have 
done this, even if we had the chance ? Englishmen did 
it in England, why not Irishmen in Ireland? Are English- 
men superior to Irishmen in these things ? When have 
they shown it when the two races had an equal chance ? 
Have they shown it in this country ? It is hardly fair to 
speak of colonial times, for Englishmen here were then 
in their own country and came to it with rank and for- 
tune, title and honor and power and possession of land 
assured to them by letters patent from the crown. Of 
course, when the revolution came, thev still held their 
station, changing only their allegiance, and yet, with all 
of this great start assured them, we shall find, a little fur- 
ther on, that when the struggle came, the Irish people who 
entered at the lowest level of the social scale, naked and 
helpless, fleeing from persecution, with nothing but clear 
heads, strong hands and stout hearts to depend upon, had 
already worked their w r ay pretty well to the top. But 
take the arrivals from the two countries since American 
independence. Hav'nt the Irish held their own pretty 
well, compared with the English new comers ? Did the 
English produce any one here equal to Andrew Jackson ? 
When General Jackson was holding his receptions at 
New Orleans did they send any one over from England 
who was able to match him ? 

Go to Europe ! Tell me in what continental nation 
these Englishmen have surpassed us in rising to high po- 
sition. Did they do it in Russia, to which we gave two 
field marshals and a governor general ? Did they do it 
in Austria, to which we gave two marshals, three aulic 
councillors and have there to-day the Count O'Hara Taaffe 



3 6 

a cabinet minister ? Did they do it in Spain to which we 
gave several captains general, ambassadors and grandees, 
and, even over all their proud hidalgos, placed one of our 
race as prime minister ? Did they do it in France, to 
which we gave governors, ambassadors, cabinet ministers 
and half a dozen marshals, besides the great marshal 
president ? Is there any continental nation where they 
rose to eminence ? Oh yes ! There is one. Turkey. 
They are great among the Turks. 

Will it be argued that our brilliant achievements in 
this respect were because our best men went abroad, 
while theirs staved at home ? Well ! Even this bril- 
liant galaxy of foreign successes did not exhaust our 
supply at home. We had a few men left even after 
this immense draught on our resources. Some of these 
men, unable to rise at home, crossed over to English soil, 
challenging Englishmen on their own ground, and in spite 
of prejudice, patronage and power, rose in every depart- 
ment of literature, science, art, politics, and statesmanship 
to the highest place to which a subject might aspire. The 
most brilliant writers in England are Irishmen. The finest 
comedv that ever delighted a London audience was writ- 
ten by Sheridan, an Irishman. The greatest interpreter 
of Shakespeare that ever trod the English boards was 
Edmund Kean, an Irishman. The man who came next 
to him in this power was his son Charles, an' Irishman. 
The. leader of English science to day is John Tvndal, an 
Irishman. The very walls of the Parliament, from which 
Irishmen to-dav are excluded, are decorated with the 
magic pencil of McClise, an Irishman. The profoundest 
statesman who ever lifted his voice within those walls was 
Edmund Burke, an Irishman. The Ambassador of Eng- 
land at vSt. Petersburg is an Irishman ; the ablest Indian 
Viceroy England ever had was Mavo, an Irishman ; the 



37 

present Lord Mayor of the City of London is an Irish- 
man, and the acknowledged greatest General England 
has to-day is Roberts, an Irishman. 

There was a. sound of revelry by night, 

And Belgium's capital had gathered then 

Her beauty and her chivalry ; and bright 

The lamps shone o'er fair women aud brave men. 

But the bravest, grandest man who that night graced 
the hall was he who combined in himself the character of 
General of the British army and Commander-in-Chief of 
the allied forces of Europe in the gigantic struggle against 
the great Napoleon. All the night long he bowed with 
courtly grace, and trod the mazes of the dance, as gaily 
as though he were but the carpet knight he seemed, yet 
he alone of all assembled in that hall knew that Napoleon 
was silently massing his forces for the havoc of the mor- 
row. All had been prepared for his arrival, but the peo- 
ple must not know of it. No alarm must be given. One 
look of care upon that radiant face, one word of warning 
from those smiling lips telling of the fate that was im- 
pending, and the whole city would have gone wild with 
terror. And so he ordered this ball to be given and all 
the night long he danced and bowed and smiled, waiting, 
waiting for the terrible signal gun. At last it came. 
Bounding upon his steed he dashed to the field, and the 
victory of Waterloo added another crown to England's 
glory. 

This man, too, was an Irishman, one whose fathers 
and grandfathers for centuries had been born in Ireland, 
and had lived and died upon Irish soil. 

Tell me ! The country that produces men like these, 
is it not fit to be free ? "Oh, no !" some people sav, "it 
ought to be governed by England." 

Well then, with all this splendid record made by the 



33 

Irish race, and I have not told you the half of it, would 
you not think there was enough natural generosity among 
the English rulers to treat Ireland with some approach to 
ordinary justice. Has it done so ? Let us see. 

I have attempted to show you something of what 
Ireland was under Irish rule, and something of what it 
was capable of being, under anything like a proper rule 
by anybody. 

Let me now try to show you something of the con- 
dition to which it has been brought by the persecuting 
policy of this ungrateful British Government. 

Ireland Under English Rule. 

In seeking to describe the condition of an oppressed 
country we naturally go to the people themselves for an 
account of their grievances, but in trying to picture to you 
the condition of Ireland I dare not do this. The story 
thev tell is one of such horror, such misery, such despair, 
that were I to cite their reports, your reason would revolt 
and refuse to accept them as true. Americans would say 
that under the rule of enlightened English statesmen of 
the 19th century such a state of things is impossible, at 
least as to Ireland ; that in some remote and recently 
acquired colony in Africa or Asia some approach to such 
a condition of things might possibly, for a little while ex- 
ist, until the beneficent laws of England could be put in 
operation, but that in Ireland, a sister isle, within arm's 
length of England, claimed to have been ruled by it for 
seven hundred years, and full in the gaze of European 
civilization, such things are impossible. I shall therefore 
cite not one single Irish authority on the subject. I will 
cite for you none but the declarations of English conti- 
nental and American statesmen,- travellers and writers. 
This may seem like rashly ceding too much of the strength 



39 

of Ireland's claim. Alas ! Its grievances are so great 
that were even the major part of them withheld, enough 
would still remain to command the sympathy of the world. 
Some of the declarations as to these grievances have been 
collected by Mr. Farrer, in the Contemporary Review for 
January, 1881. He gives the date of the declarations, 
but says, that owing to England's refusal to grant reforms 
they are as true now as the day they were written. 

Gustave de Beaumont, the celebrated French publicist 
was astounded in reading a report of an English Parlia- 
mentary Commission, that there were in Ireland nearly 
three millions of people exposed every year to the peril of 
absolute want. He could not believe it, and in 1835 
visited the country, in person, to satisfy himself on the 
matter. Having seen it, he wrote: — "I have seen the In- 
dian in his forests, and the negro in his chains, and I thought 
I had beheld the lowest term of human misery, but I had 
not then known the lot of Ireland. * * Irish 

misery forms a type by itself of which there exists no- 
where else either model or imitation. In seeing it one 
recognizes that no theoretical limits can be assigned to the 
misfortunes of nations." Mr. Farrer adds of De Beau- 
mont that " he does not hesitate to pronounce the 
condition of the population worse than that of the medi- 
aeval serfs. He finds it difficult to say whether the dwell- 
ings inhabited or the dwellings deserted form the saddest 
sight. "The condition," he says, "which in Ireland is above 
poverty, would be among other people, frightful distress, 
and the miserable people who in France are justly pitied, 
would form in Ireland a privileged class." 

Von Raumer, Professor of History at Berlin, "visited 
Ireland in 1835 anc ^ returned with his mind filled with one 
thought, the indescribable misery of so many thousands of 
people. The day he spent there he counted as the saddest 



4° 

of his life. In England he had looked in vain for miserv 
and found the reports of it exaggerated, but, of Ireland, 
no words could express the frightful truth that everywhere 
met the eye. There, the sun must testify that Europe, too 
has its pariahs — yet, not Europe, but Ireland alone." 

A few days later Kohl, the distingushed German 
traveller wrote still more strongly of what is still to this 
day the condition of a large part of Ireland. "He had 
pitied the Letts of Livonia, for living in huts built of un- 
hewn logs of trees, with the crevices stopped with moss., 
but having seen the west of Ireland, he regarded the Letts, 
Esthnonians and Finlanders as living in a state of com- 
parative comfort. He doubted whether in the whole 
world a nation could be found subjected to the physical 
privations of the peasantry in some parts of Ireland. * 
Nowhere but in Ireland could be found human creatures,, 
living, from year's end to year's end, on the same root, 
berry or weed. There were animals, indeed, that did so 
but human beings — nowhere save in Ireland." 

Mr. Farrer says : — " English travellers have not 
spoken less graphicallv than foreigners of the real state 
of parts of Ireland, from the time of Spenser, the poet, 
down to the recent account of Mr. Tuke in 1880." 

"It is undeniable," said Inglis, after his visit to Ire- 
land in 1834, "that the condition of the Irish poor is im- 
measurably worse than that of the West Indian slave." 

Barrow, after a tour in Ireland in 1835, writes : — 
"No picture drawn by the pencil, none by the pen, can 
possibly convey an idea of the sad realitv. 
There is no other country on the face of the earth where 
such extreme miserv prevails as in Ireland." 

Count Cavour published two articles on Ireland in 



1843 and '44, in which he spoke "of the deplorable con- 
dition of the agricultural population." 

Jules de Last erye,in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
in 1853, says : — "The question is always the same, before 
and after the poor law, before and after the famine, before 
and after the emigration, before and after the institution 
of the Encumbered Estates Court." 

The Abbe Perrand, afterwards Bishop of Autun, 
visited the Island in 1S60, and wrote : — "How great 
was my astonishment, more than 20 years after the 
second journey of De Beaumont to come upon the very 
destitution so eloquently described by him in 1839!" Mr. 
Farrer says of him : — "After living long in a department 
considered as one of the poorest and most backward in 
France, Perrand undertook to say. * * "that 
the lot of the poorest peasant in France could not com- 
pare with the misery of a large part of Ireland." 

What do American travellers say ? Last year, the 
Inter-Ocean, of Chicago, commissioned Mr. Redpath to 
visit Ireland and report upon its condition. I heard his 
report at a public meeting in Chicago. As I remember 
it, he said : — "Christianity has been called the religion of 
sorrow. If it be so, then the Holy Land of our day is in 
the West of Ireland. In spirit let us loose the sandals 
from our feet as we draw near that sacred ground. Every 
sod of its ancient soil is wet with the dew of human tears. 
Every murmur of its dripping brooks is accompanied with 
a chorus of sighs from breaking human hearts. Every 
breeze which sweeps across its barren moors, carries to 
the mountain tops, and, I trust, far beyond, the groans 
and the prayers of a brave but despairing people. The 
sun never sets upon their sorrows except to give place to 
the pitying stars which look down there on human woes,. 



4 2 

countless as their own constellated hosts. I cannot paint 
those woes. I cannot portray those sorrows. As often 
as I try I fail. When I think of the woes I have wit- 
nessed and the laws which produced them, my blood 
boils with indignation. When I think of the sorrows I 
have seen, and how many must yet be borne, my heart 
dissolves in tears." 

Mind you ! Not one of these words I have quoted 
comes from the mouth of an Irishman. England may 
silence Irish members of Parliament, but here is an in- 
dictment drawn against her by the greatest men of Con- 
tinental Europe, endorsed by English writers and corrob- 
orated by American travellers, charging her with crimes 
against humanity unequaled in the civilized or barbarous 
world ; and the verdict of the world is guilt}', guilty, 
guilty of the crime as charged. What can England plead 
in extenuation! Though she found the land a desert and 
the people savages, with seven hundred years of rule she 
should have reclaimed the land and civilized the people. 
But she found Ireland no desert. She found it one of the 
fairest and richest lands the world had seen, adorned with 
castles and mansions and palaces of royal splendor, an- 
cient towers and mediaeval seats of learning, possessed 
by a gay and happy and cultured people, a country 
known throughout Europe, as the Isle of Saints and the 
home of learned men. She has left it, still a land of 
beautv, for, to destroy that, was beyond her power, but 
the people, the poor unfortunate people, she has reduced 
to a bondage which cries to God for vengeance. 
Location of Distress. 

This horrible misery in Ireland, depicted by the dif- 
ferent authorities I have cited, does not apply to all classes 
there in equal degree, nor does it exist in equal extent in 
all places. 



43 

There are a great many farmers there who are tol- 
erably well to do, but they are few in comparison with 
the mass, and they are people who, by reason of then- 
former position, natural abilities, cultivated faculties, 
economical habits, business capacity, and great force and 
energy of character, instead of being merely well to do, 
ought to be the solid men of their respective counties. 
These people, with a keen sense of what is due to them- 
selves and their families, not only in the way. of material 
co.nforts and ordinary luxuries of life, but also in the 
matter of social position for themselves and their sons and 
daughters are just as much victims of oppression as their, 
in some respects, less fortunate fellow sufferers. Then 
as to the geographical distribution of this suffering. In 
the northern part of the country it exists in what we 
might call the positive degree ; in the east and part of the 
south it rises to the comparative state, it is only in the 
west and southwest that it mounts to the superlative 
degree of human misery, that is. the superlative degree, 
as compared with the others. To farmers in the United 
States, the most favored condition of tenant farmers in 
Ireland at the present day, would be considered simply 
unendurable, not in the matter of food and clothing of 
which, thank God, the class I am speaking of has enough, 
but because of the lack of those things which, after mere 
food and clothing, make all of life that," in the common 
sense, is worth having. There are about 500,000 tenant 
farmers in Ireland, representing a population of about 
three millions of people. There are about two and a half 
million other people who are dependent on these farmers 
for employment. It will not, in this country, be consid- 
ered a rash proposition to say, that any man who denies 
himself the pleasures of city life, and 'gets clown to the 
hard, close, continual struggle of digging his sustenance 



44 

out of the soil, ought,- at least, have the satisfaction of 
owning the land on which his labor is expended and on 
which his life is passed. There ought, therefore, be at 
least live hundred thousand persons in Ireland owners of 
land. Do you know how many there are ? Until very 
recently, only eight thousand, and the major part of the 
land owmed by about seven hundred persons. Only seven 
hundred persons owning one-half the soil of a nation 
which, forty years ago, had a population of nearly nine 
millions of people, and which, by natural increase alone* 
ought to be now, at least, twenty millions. It is now only 
a little over five, yet the rich grow richer every day. 

Cause of the Suflct-iug. 

What is the cause of all this trouble ? Can it be as- 
certained ? lias mortal man ever fathomed the mystery ?' 

Every traveller who has visited the island, during the 
present century, from whatever country he may have 
come, whatever may have been his station at home, what- 
ever may have been his hobbies there, every one of them, 
when called upon to point out the immediate cause of Ire- 
land's woe, marches straight to one particular book, opens 
it at the same identical page, and puts his linger on the 
same identical spot. We approach and look. — It is the 
Land Law of Ireland. There's where all the trouble 
comes from. That's what kills your men, women and 
children ! that's what unroofs your houses, tears down 
their walls and makes their hearth stones desolate. That's 
what depopulates your provinces and sends your poor 
people flving to the ends of the earth, seeking, and, thank 
God ! finding shelter. They quickly set to work to gain 
for themselves a foothold, they grasp here and there such 
advantages as come within their reach, but, half the time 
they are glancing back at their persecutors and racking 



45 

their brains for some means of revenge. Gradually as 
they grow stronger, they come together and the one sole 
inquiry is how, how, how may it be done ! 

"Haste me to know it, 

That I, with wiua-s as swift 

A.s meditation, or the thoughts of love, 

May sweep to 1113- revenge. 

Of course, the}' cry 

Revolution. 

Of course, they say, "Let us gather our hosts from 
the ends of the earth, let us fall on them and crush them !" 
Tell us to discourage revolution to such men ! Why 
they'll rend us limb from limb if we do it. And yet, we 
have to doit. We must do it for the sake of the loved 
ones at home. For us to talk revolution now, is, with our 
own hands, to put the knife to the throats of our own 
brothers and sisters, our own kith and kin ; it is to be- 
come our own executioners. 

In the polar regions of the north, when the bitter 
cold of winter rules, a cold which destroys even the sense 
of feeling, the people there set their daggers in the ice 
and smear the blades with blood. The famished beasts 
•of prey approach and, wild with hunger, insensible with 
cold, they lick those blades, which give an outward show 
of relief. As they lick the blades there is a flow of blood 
but the poor creatures are unable to feel that it is their 
own. Day by day, the crafty hunters, with no further 
effort than to reach forth their hands, gather in the spoil. 

The successors of Angevin rule in Ireland are en- 
dowed with all of the Angevin craft and they have no 
more regard for the Irish people than the Esquimaux have 
for the wild beasts which surround them. 

The tyrants place within your reach the dao-o-ers 
of revolution. The Holy Father says : Do not touch 



4 6 

them. Not now ! To touch them now is death. Do not 
doubt the Holy Father. Do not doubt his love for the 
Irish people. Do not doubt his devotion to the Irish 
cause. Do not doubt his adherence to the principle of a 
nation's right to be independent. Do not fear his ban 
upon revolution for just cause. The Holy Father is to- 
day the most pronounced revolutionist in Europe. He 
defies the usurpation of the House of Savov. He de- 
clares that the independence of the Papal States must 
and shall be restored. Do not think that he recoils from 
use of force when force is proper. When the Buzzuri 
came down from the Alps to destroy the Temporal Pow- 
er, he flung to the front the noblest youth of Rome: told 
them to go and die, if need be, for their country. They 
went, and the soil of Roman territory was reddened with 
their blood, which the Holy Father did not scruple to shed 
in behalf of Roman independence. 

Show him that you are in earnest, that 3< r ou have just 
cause, combined with the strength, the will and the op- 
portunitv required, and you'll have no complaint to make 
of the action of the Holy Father. 

Well ! Is there no present remedy? Oh yes! Our 
American friends propose one. 

Emigration. 

Let the people emigrate they say. Let the surplus 
population come to America. They will find here plenty 
of land, and work and food and freedom for all. Then 
the competition for land at home will be reduced and 
those who want farms can gel them at their own price. 
Irishmen answer, hav'nt we come, millions and millions of 
us, and though we have profited by the change, has it 
benefitted those at home ? Not at all. As De Lasterye 
told you, the question is always the same. Just as fast as 



47 

the landlord finds that one of his tenants has, in one way 
or another, got half his family over to America, he says: 
"Now this man has only half as many mouths to feed, 
only half as many backs to clothe as before. He can 
therefore pay me twice as much rent. Steward ! Double 
that man's rent for next pay day,'" and up it goes and the 
farmer is no better off than before. You think this is 
overdrawn ? What do you say to this ? The rent has 
been raised because the farmer has been seen on a mar- 
ket day, with a new coat ; because his daughter has been 
seen at church with a string of glass beads about her 
neck, aye, incredible as you may think, because the agent 
has seen a pot of flowers in the farmer's window : — "If 
you can spend money for Mowers you can pay more rent 
— pay it or leave." Statistics show that the degree of 
distress is just about the same, whether the population is 
one million, as it was in the seventeenth century, or eight 
millions as it was in the nineteenth, and it is so because 
the landlord instead of fixing the rent according to the 
value of the land, forces it up to the highest point com- 
patible with the tenants power — not to feed, clothe and 
educate his family, but to save them from absolute star- 
vation, and though he strain a point too far and the ten- 
ant die, what does the landlord care ! He can get anoth- 
er tenant in his place or, if not, he can do with the land 
what pleases him better — fatten beef upon it. Do you 
ask why the tenant takes a farm at too high a rent ? 
Why will a starving man promise, what you like, for 
food ? He cannot go elsewhere. There is no other 
employment for him. He must take the land or starve. 

In the ancient Province of Meath there are miles, 
and miles of land, miles in length and miles in breadth, 
once covered with the homes of tenant farmers, now, the 
tenants evicted, the houses demolished, the hedges up- 



48 

rooted, the land levelled, turned into grass and given over 
to cattle. The famine of the tenant is the harvest of the 
landlord. The discovery of steam and perfection of ma- 
chinery changed the economic laws of the world. Eng- 
land was rich in coal and iron. With coal and iron came 
steam and machinery. With steam and machinery came 
commerce, and with all these England became the work- 
shop of the world. With steam and machinery she did, 
in that little island, work equal to the manual labor of six 
hundred millions of men, and in all the world there are 
not three hundred million manual laborers. By the most 
stringent prohibitory laws she forbade Ireland from com- 
peting with her in that work. English ships went, there- 
tore, to all parts of the world laden with English manu- 
factures. Wheat and corn to feed the workers they could 
bring back from the most distant lands. Fresh meat 
they could not ; therefore Irish lands became more valu- 
able for grazing than for farming ; therefore landlords 
improved every opportunity of evicting farmers and es- 
tablishing graziers ; therefore emigration means enlarged 
rule for the landlord class, and proportionate ruin to the 
Irish people. 

In the spring of 1879 the leaders of the Irish people 
saw that another 

Famine 

was coming. The experience of '47 taught them that 
famine meant failure to pay rent, that failure to pay rent 
meant eviction, and that eviction meant death. Those 
who know the tenacity with which the poor people of 
Ireland cling to their little pieces of land know that the 
only cause they give for eviction is the non-payment of rent 
and that they fail to pay rent only from absolute inability 
to do so, after denying themselves, not only all luxuries 



49 

but all articles of convenience and comfort, all clothing 
down to rags hardly covering their nakedness; all food 
down to barely what is necessary to keep soul and body 
together. Of course, after a man has stripped himself 
and family to that extent, eviction means death, for, the 
fell spirit of hate so possessed the exterminating landlord 
class, that though the friends and neighbors of the evicted 
person, generally in scarcely better condition than he, 
would, of charity, wish to divide even the last crust with 
the outcast, they imperilled their own lives in so doing, for, 
every such act was marked, and the party so granting 
aid was literally "booked" for the next eviction possible 
in his own case. This is incredible, but it is true. It 
would seem that human cruelv could no further go, but 
in the Gerard evictions at Ballinglas, in the County of 
Gal way, though no rent was due, it was determined* to 
destroy the village. With sheriff, police and dragoons, 
the villagers were ousted, the houses torn down, and even 
the very foundations dug out of the grond, and the people 
told to go anywhere, anywhere out of the landlord's sight. 
One woman, with a child at the breast, was hunted out of 
three places of refuge, and when the poor creatures hud- 
dled in the ditches, and built little fires there to temper 
the chill ni^ht blast, the heartless agents of still more 
heartless landlords followed them there, and stamped out 
even that poor source of warmth. Do you say this is 
horrible? It is nothing, absolutely nothing, to what has 
been done in Ireland during your lives and mine, not once, 
but thousands and thousands of times. After these out- 
rages came others, called agrarian, occasional wild, 
desperate revenges, the cause of which was stated in 
the English Parliament in '46, by Lord John Russell, and 
repeated bv Gladstone in '70. "It is," they said, "no other 
than the cause which the great master of human nature 



5° 

describes, when he makes the tempter suggest it as a 
reason to violate the law." 

" Famine is in thy cheeks, 

Need find oppression starveth in thy eyes, 

Upon thy bark hangs ragged misery, 

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law, 

The world affords no law to make thee rich, 

Then be not poor, but break it," 

In the famine of '46, '49 there were three hundred 
thousand evictions in Ireland, meaning death or exile to 
more than a million people. For less than this in '89 France 
was drenched with blood and the oppressors there swept 
from the face of the earth. 

That a frantic rising of the people in Ireland did not 
follow the famine of '79 is due to the inception, perfection 
and remarkable management of one of the most wonder- 
ful organizations of modern times, 

The Land League 

of Ireland. The British rrovernment should have been 
grateful for this should it not? It ought to have rejoiced 
that any organization took upon itself the great task of 
assuaging the sorrows and vindicating the rights of rive 
millions of its people, espousing their cause against the 
rapacity of a few thousand soulless wretches whose life 
business it was to grind the faces of the poor. The great 
English government, of course, applauded so' great an 
act. Oh! not at all. Possessed with its implacable 
hatred of the Irish race, blinded by that hate to the plainest 
principles of justice, it descended from it imperial station 
to take up the fight of a set of vultures whose heartless 
policy even a band of first-class brigands would scorn to 
adopt; snatched from civil life one of the leaders in the 
movement, and with usual British cruelty and stupidity 
flung him into a felon's cell, accomplishing thereby only 



5* 

this, that it added one more martyr to the Irish cause, 
exalted one more patriot to the hero's place, giving irish- 
men one more memory to cherish, one more name to 
love, that of the gentle, generous and henceforth immor- 
tal Michael Davitt. 

There is another name now in the mouth of every 
friend of Ireland; a name historic for more than one 
generation in the English and Irish annals, the name of 
the man whom of all men the English government 
now most hates and fears; one upon whose track the 
sleuth hounds of British vengeance have been already 
loosed, a man who bears to-day a load of care greater 
than racks the brain of any crowned head in Europe, 
for, the destinies of a suffering race are in his hands, a 
man who for his greater strength, needs now above all 
things the assurance that he has the confidence, approval 
and support of that race for which he is risking his for- 
tune, life, and honor, our present, trusted leader, Charles 
Stuart 

Parnell. 

All does not go smoothly under his rule. He is charg- 
ed with all sorts of contradictory faults. He is too timid, 
too bold; too vacillating, too dictatorial; too radical, too 
conservative ; too visionary, too practical. Have you ever 
heard any one doubt his fidelity to the cause of Ireland? 
Never! How does it happen then that some of these very 
worthy gentlemen, and I do not mean to speak ironically, 
who criticise him so severely are not holding the position 
of leader instead of this so incompetent person? I'll tell you 
why. It is because the work was there to be done, and 
whether he does it perfectly or not, he was by common 
consent considered the best man to undertake it, and is 
still so considered. Reflect for a moment upon the situa- 
tion of Parnell — single-handed he is nVhting the consoli- 



52 

dated power of the British Empire. Single-handed he 
is contending with the combined skill of the British Par- 
liament, and they have had to change their form of govern- 
ment in order to beat him. How do you know what 
reasons he may have had for the movements which gave 
dissatisfaction? How do you know how far they were 
feints, how far they were real? Are we foolish enough 
to say that his- policy of yesterday must be his policv of 
to-day, and the plan of to-day the rule of to-morrow? 
His principle must be the same, yes, but his policy must 
be as developments require. The master of a vessel 
aims all the time to reach a certain port. He takes an 
observation and adopts his course, but, day by day he 
rinds that, though he has headed right all the time, unseen 
currents have had power over him, and so, day by day, 
he takes his bearings and veers and tacks and shifts as 
need requires. Let us not be too exacting. Let us 
remember that the sailors murmured at Columbus, and 
that Washington narrowly escaped being crushed by the 
cabal. Parnell himself summarized the situation in his 
last manifesto. If the people stand to the cardinal 
principle of the league, the withholding of rent, all is 
well. If they fail in this, all is, for the present, lost. 

It is a great trial for the people. There is a heavy 
pressure brought to bear upon them. Unless they get 
great encouragement they cannot hold out. And here 
comes the significance of Irish demonstrations here. It 
is the cry going up from Irishmen in America to Irish- 
men in Ireland to 

Hold the Fort. 
It is for this that your branch leagues are formed, for this, 
and to send supplies, that the fort may be held. The re- 
sponse of Irishmen in America is -a noble one. All over the 
land, branch leagues are formed and forming. The demon 



53 

stration is probably all that could have been reasonably 
expected, but alas, it falls far short of what is required. 
If this movement fails, then, when the books are opened 
and the accounts examined, you will find that much of 
the cause of defeat will be charged to the insufficient aid 
received from the United States. The trouble is, that 
quicker work is required than people here can compre- 
hend. By the time we get fully aroused and ready to 
act in this matter the present fight, unless we move more 
quickly than we are doing, will be over, with what result 
no one now can say. There is time enough yet to save 
the movement, if we will only hurry forward the supplies. 
The real draft upon the league fund at home has not yet 
begun. It will begin under the coercion act, to feed the 
families of our friends who will be testing the power of 
endurance of the British people. When the imprison- 
ments and evictions begin, if there are not funds to feed 
the families of the victims, then the movement will fail, 
not through Parneil's fault, but ours. It is possible there 
may be a compensation in this, but it is one that it would 
be reckless and inhuman to count upon. Parnell has 
never said yet, to what point he proposes to lead us, 
other than to improve the condition of the people of 
Ireland. In that we are all with him. It is unnecessary 
for the present to say more. Prudence is not distrust. 
Servility is not support. Sufficient for the day is the duty 
thereof. Our present duty is to support 

The League. 

Let us examine for a moment the work of the 
league. One great trouble in doing anything in Ireland 
for the amelioration of the condition of the Irish people 
has been that there were always so many fearful griev- 
ances to redress, it was difficult to tell where to begin. 
Every grievance on one side argued a privilege on the 



54 

other. Every attempt to redress a grievance was a blow 
at privilege. Those benefitted by the particular privilege, 
of course, massed themselves against the proposed reform, 
and they easily rallied all parties interested in other 
privileges to join them, by the powerful argument — " if 
3*ou don't save us now, it will be your turn next." Within 
the memory of men now living, four-fifths of the people 
of Ireland were deprived of civil rights; they were not 
allowed to educate their children ; to hold office ; to vote ; 
to belong to the learned professions; to buy land; or even 
to own a horse worth £5 of British money. The great 
effort of O'Connell's life was to emancipate the mass of 
the people from this condition of servitude. At last, in 
1829 the first victory was gained, and civil rights restored. 
Then the most odious grievance remaining was, that the 
whole people were taxed to support an established church, 
to which not one tenth of them belonged. For forty 
years that fight went on. At last, that too was won. 
Then, two paramount grievances remained, the education 
question and the land question. As to both of these the 
fight was carried on, with occasional small successes from 
time to time, but leaving the main issue still pending in 
each case, and the people somewhat divided in sentiment, 
as to which fight should be most determinedly pressed. 
Then came the famine of 1879, anc ^ ^ mav De sa ^ tnat 
that is what determined the question as to where the 
Irish forces should be massed. When the Irish leaders 
saw in the spring of '79, that the crops were failing, they 
knew famine was coming again; the}' knew that this 
meant untold suffering to the people; a general eviction 
of the tenantry, and then, as evicted, starving men are 
prone to rebel, they foresaw " risings," agrarian outrages 
and danger of losing all that had been gained. 

Then Parnell and his friends raised the crv of im- 



55 

pending famine and need of relief. The landlords, the 
correspondents of the British press, and the British 
officials, who prayed for famine because it reduced the 
number of Irishmen, denied that an}' such state of things 
existed. Then Parnell said, we will checkmate all these 
liars; we will go over to America and expose the situa- 
tion to the world and beg food there to feed English sub- 
jects. Then the British government got alarmed at the 
effect of such demonstration, and, as a flank movement to 
Parnell, began to stir in the matter and give some aid, for 
which they now claim so much credit. A thorough 
organization of friends of Ireland having been effected to 
protect Ireland from hunger, as soon as that danger was 
over it was determined to keep up the organization, and 
with it make one more struggle for the great principle of 
tenant right in Ireland. 

It needed no discussion or argument to convince Irish 
people that to obtain relief from England some radical 
means were required. In the long history of English 
rule in Ireland, it had never been known that England 
yielded a single measure of justice, except upon compul- 
sion. The Irish people had appealed to the reason of 
England, only to find prejudice stronger than reason. 
They had invoked the sympathy of the English rulers 
only to be told that sympathy had nothing to do with 
political economy. They had resorted to arms and were 
overpowered in the struggle. They now resolved to 
appeal in another quarter. They determined to appeal 
to the Irish people themselves and in a way that had 
never been tried before. You know what a 'strike' is. 
You know how a few thousand men refusing to go on 
under the old contracts will disarrange the business of a 
whole community. Some one asked the question, "why 
not get up a 'strike' all through Ireland, against paying 



56 

these infamous rents ? Put half a million tenant farmers 
on a 'strike' against the land law of Ireland, and see what 
that will do. It was done. For the last year there has 
practically been no law in Ireland, except the rule of the 
land league." What has been the result ? Many impa- 
tient spirits cry, "Nothing, only to make things worse 
than before." Ah ! That is a mistake. It is not true to 
say that nothing has been gained. It has taught the fiery 
Celts that great things can be done by calm, quiet, persis- 
tent effort and I don't know of any greater blessing that 
could be brought to the Irish people than to get them to 
realize the truth of that proposition unless it be to prevail 
upon them to reduce it to practice. It has already 
forced an amendment to the British constitution, the cur- 
tailment of free speech. I do not say that that amend- 
ment is an improvement, but I have never understood that 
the improvement of the British constitution was any part 
of the mission of the Irish race. It has drawn the atten- 
tion of thoughtful minds all over the world to the griev- 
ances of the Irish people in a way and to an extent that 
has never been done before. It has stripped from the 
face of England the hypocritical mask of an assumed 
philanthrophy with which it has so long beguiled the 
world ; it has shown to the nations of the earth in a way 
they never realized before, that England, with all its pre- 
tence of refinement, is a moral monster in its' dealings 
with millions of people subject to its rule. In ever}' quar- 
ter of the globe as well as this, it has brought Irishmen 
together to swear again fidelity to the cause of their na- 
tive land, and, neither last nor least, it has done what has 
never been done before, it has rooted out nearly all dissen- 
sion between Irishmen in Ireland. It has done what was 
never done in Ireland, even in the days of Clontarf, for, 
under the potent sway of this great league, we see the North 



57 

and the South, the East and the West, the high and the 
low, the old and the new, the Gail and the Gaill, all join- 
ing hands for sweet Ireland's sake. God grant that union 
may be perpetual ! The greatest grievance Ireland ever 
had was internal discord. Remove that, and all the others 
will vanish like mists before the morning sun. 

The great power of union on the true principle and 
action in the right direction was never more quickh 
shown than now. Under merely moral suasion England 
laughed for years at the Irish demand for rule at home. 
A few months work of the land league and lo ! a plan of 
Home Rule, by county government is proffered to the 
Irish people in a speech from the throne itself. A few- 
years ago this would have been hailed as a priceless boon ; 
now, Irishmen hardly care to discuss the proposition. For 
decade after decade, divided Ireland asked for a new land 
law in Ireland. The British Parliament was too much 
occupied with other matters to give anything but the 
mocking act of 1870, which left many things worse than 
before. A little more land league, and the Government 
postpones its foreign business, and seriously considers the 
question. Is not all this something ? Does it not show 
that there is a power at work that has never been felt be- 
fore ? Ah ! but there's the coercion bill ! Well ! what 
of it ? Is that anything new in Ireland ? We have had 
58 coercion bills since the act of union in 1800, and Ire- 
land still lives. Is English supremacy anv better estab- 
lished now than before ? The coercion bill is only anoth- 
er stupid English blunder. The wind and the sun strove 
one day, the fable says, with a traveller and his cloak. 
The wind blew his fiercest blasts, but the traveller only 
hugged his cloak more tightly about him. The sun shone 
forth with genial, kindly warmth, and lo ! the traveller 
threw his cloak away. Had England been wise enough 



58 

to let the sun of justice shine on Ireland, there had been 
no need of coercion bills. 

What the Land League Demand's. 

The League, after full deliberation, has formulated 
the demands of the Irish people. 

It divides its demand into three propositions, com- 
monly called, "the three F's," that is : "Fixed tenure. 
Fair rent and Free sale." At present there is no fixity 
of tenure, no fairness of rent, no freedom of sale. At 
present a landlord may evict a tenant almost at pleasure ; 
there is, therefore, no fixity of tenure, no fixed time that 
a tenant can depend on for holding his farm, and therefore 
he dare not build a house, nor improve his land, or in any 
way adorn or beautify his home. Life is for him a con- 
tinued uncertainty, a prolonged agony of suspense. As 
"John Stuart Mill said of him, he is the only human be- 
ing who has nothing to gain from increased industry, and 
nothing to lose by increased idleness. 

There is no fairness of rent. The landlord charges, 
not what the land is worth, but what he pleases. 

There is no freedom of sale. The tenant is not al- 
lowed to sell his lease because he has none to sell. He is 
not allowed to sell his improvements, and with the pro- 
ceeds go to some other place, or into some other business, 
because if he leaves the land, all his improvements are 
forfeited to the landlord. Compensation is named in the 
act of 1870. It has that existence, but practically no 
other. It can be avoided always by raising the rent be- 
yond the power of the tenant to pay. Therefore the 
league demands that the government give fixity of tenure, 
fairness of rent and freedom of sale. It is demanded 
that the law be changed allowing the landlord to fix the 
tenure, and that there be substituted for it a rule that a 



59 

tenant may hold his land as long as he pleases, provided 
he pays the rent, and that in a famine season, certain de- 
lays may be had. 

It is demanded that the law be changed allowing the 
landlord to fix the rent, and that there be substituted for 
it a mode of fixing the rent from time to time at a fair 
and just amount, to be determined by arbitration between 
the tenant and the landlord, by the courts, or by commis- 
sioners, or by some means, whereby the tenant shall have 
as fair a representation as the landlord. 

It is demanded that the law be changed forfeiting an 
outgoing tenant's improvements to the landlord, and that 
there be substituted for it a rule that an outgoing tenant 
may sell not only his improvements but his right to occu- 
py the land, and that if the landlord want, it he must 
pay what it will bring like any other man. 

These are the three F's as first demanded, but the 
demand not being quickly granted the people are now 
adding a fourth F, freedom of purchase, that is, not gov- 
ernmental, wholesale expropriation, which is absurd to 
talk about, but an absolute right to have the landlord's 
title to any particular land occupied by a tenant, properly 
valued, in cash, with a right in the tenant to pay that sum 
in instalments for twenty-five years or less, if the tenant 
chooses, with government rate of interest, and thereby 
extinguish the landlord's claim and have done with rent 
forever. To all of these demands a deaf ear is turned 
by the English government. 

In ancient Rome there appeared, one day, a strange, 
weird woman, bearing a number of mysterious looking 
books. She was a sibyl, a prophet of those days. She 
demanded a great price for the books, the sibylline leaves, 
in which, she said, the fate- of Rome was written. The 



6o 

authorities listened to the proposition but hesitated as to> 
the priee. The sibyl retired, but the next day came 
again and in sight of the rulers and the now excited citi- 
zens, destroyed one of the books, yet still demanded the 
same great price for what remained. Several times was 
this repeated until at last the people began to murmur, 
and then the authorities yielded and gave the price de- 
manded. Something was saved, but much had been lost 
never to be regained. 

. Ireland demanded from England a recognition of 
rights when she could have given in return ample vol- 
umes of love, honor, esteem, affection, friendship, respect, 
regard, reciprocal support, community of interest, unity 
of ambition. Year by year England rejected the demand 
and one by one the books are burning. Love went long 
ago. How many yet remain intact, how many might yet 
be rescued from the flames I will not undertake to say, 
but the people are beginning to murmur. They have 
demanded fixity of tenure and been refused ; fairness of 
rent, refused ; freedom of purchase, refused. They now 
in a more formal manner, after full deliberation, repeat 
their demand for all these things combined. If England, 
unable to read the writing on the wall still refuse, let her 
prepare to hear a different demand, a demand not for free- 
dom qualified as freedom of sale, nor for freedom 
qualified as freedom of purchase but for freedom in the 
larger sense, freedom unqualified, unrestricted, uncon- 
ditioned, the freedom of national liberty, the only true 
safeguard of individual rights. 

National L-iSicity 
does not necessarily mean national separation. Ireland 
had national liberty from 1782 to 1800. and demands to 
have it again. England has acknowledged the right of 
Ireland to make this demand, has acknowledged the 



6i 

justice of the claim, and in 17S2 deliberately granted it. 
That grant was, in 1800, by fraud, retaken, and now 
England refuses to undo that fraud, urging that the 
demand is unwise, even as a matter of policy for 
Ireland, because, they urge, its material comfort would 
not be increased thereby, but all such declarations fall flat 
on Irish ears, because, while Irishmen scoff at the declara- 
tion, and claim to know that it is faise, they would demand 
independence though they believed it to be true. All the 
sophistry of all the sophists in the world has never yet 
been able to convince anyone with the smallest spark of 
manhood in him, that slavery, under the best conditions is 
to be preferred to liberty at its worst. Accepted slavery 
means despair, and despair means death. Liberty means 
life and hope and courage, and with life and hope and 
liberty the golden gleams of a possible happy future have 
power to light up the path of even present poverty, toil 
and care, and make of the onward struggle through the 
worst of troubles a hero's glorious march instead of a 
helots shameless submission. England has notoriously 
failed in governing Ireland from Westminster. Let her 
then undo the fraud of 1S00, and allow Ireland to govern 
herself from College Green. This relief was given by 
the act of '82, and Ireland will not be content till the act 
of '82, with all the modern improvements, is restored, giv- 
ing to Ireland her own Parliament again, but, this time, a 
Parliament representing, not the garrison of the English 
pale, but the people of the whole of Ireland. 
There is no particular sanctity about 

The Act of Union. 
It was a fraud from the beginning, but to explain 
all that would take too long. Some other time. It is 
worth a special study. 

Under the pressure of public opinion England in 



62 

disestablishing the Irish Church, repealed a part of the 
act of 1800. Repeal it all, is what Ireland asks. This is 
her main demand, but, pending that petition, there is 

Some Instant Relief Required. 

With the present demands of the league granted, an 
Irish tenant farmer would be lifted at once from serfhood 
to freedom ; under the present law he is practically chained 
to the soil. He may leave now if he likes. Oh, yes! but 
he must take nothing with him. Every sod he has turned, 
every drain he has dug, every stone he has carried from 
the field and laid in a wall, every tree he has planted, every 
house he has built, every improvement he has made 
during an occupancy often, twenty and often of fifty years 
represents thought, time and work in the past, often the 
work of a life. To tell him that if he leaves the land he 
must go forth naked of all this, is to make him of necessity 
cling to his possession as he would to his life, for it is 
doubly his life ; it is the result of his life in the past, the 
support of his life in the future. Change all this; strike 
down the infamous law by which the landlord takes all 
these things and see in what a different position you put 
the tenant. In giving him these things you give in most 
cases, what to him is a fortune, yet you give him not one 
single thing which he did not place there himself. You 
do not give him the land, and that is the only thing there 
that his labor has not produced. 

But many will say this is 

Communism. 

This is taking the management of the landlord's 
property out of his hands and dividing it up among his 
tenants. How can you justify any such proceeding as 
that? Is it not true that a man's property is his own, to 
do as he likes with it? If you. are going to interfere with 
men's contracts and say that the landlord shall not claim 



63 

this, and the tenant shall not promise that we may as well 
give up law altogerher. Well ! let us look at that a little. 
You know lawyers always think there are two sides 
to every question, and it has even been said of them 
that they are like uneasy sleepers, that lie first on one side 
and then turn around and lie on the other, but let us look 
on both sides of this question not for the purpose of trying 
to yield any particular meed of justice to the landlord, f or 
there is no need of that. He has all his rights now. What 
is needed is to make him give up some of the rights he is 
holding which belong to others. 

Acknowledgements. 
And here while speaking of Irish landlords I wish to 
say, what it ought not be necessary to say, that of course 
we all recognize that when we speak of them and their 
conduct we acknowledge all the exceptions. It is not a 
very large acknowledgement to make, in point of num- 
bers, but to find even one in a district is as grateful to the 
heart of the Irish tenant as the sight of even a single star 
through the black pall of night is to the tempest-tossed 
mariner. We know that even among Irish landlords 
there are cases, few alas, but still existing, even among 
those alien in race and religion, where there is not only 
justice, but mercy, and not only mercy but charity, 
charity as sweet and loving as ever glorified humanity. 
God bless and prosper them for it. We know too that 
even among those who by blood and faith should be just 
and gentle, the hardest of the hard are found. I do not 
like to mention names, but we all know who it was that, 
finding even the willing hands of skillful agents too slow 
in unroofing tenant houses, devised and applied machinery 
to do the hellish work. 

Another thing I perhaps ought to say. We are 
appealing to Americans to sympathize with us in this con- 



6 4 

test. They may think we are sometimes a little intem- 
perate in our manner of expression ; that we do not pre- 
sent our case, in the calm, philosophic manner with which 
Englishmen claim their attention. Should this be so we 
must ask them to remember that Englishmen are phleg- 
matic by nature ; they are suffering no grievance in this 
matter ; they are in possession and desire peace ; they 
wish to disarm criticism and of course they assume a 
bland, persuasive tone, as guilty people generally do, 
when called UDon to explain their conduct. Also that the 
Celtic mind is naturally more fervid in expression than 
the Saxon, even upon indifferent matters, but, in this mat- 
ter, we are being crushed to death, and if we cry out 
.somewhat loudly, there is good reason for it. 

Qualified Rights. 

Let us look now, at this claim of absolute right to 
the land. The landlord claims that he has a right to do 
what lie pleases with his own. I concede him that. The 
mistake he makes is as to what is his own. He thinks he 
owns the land absolutely. That is a mistake. The value 
©f the land now farmed in Ireland is fifteen hundred mil- 
lion dollars. A dozen men of the wealth of some citi- 
zens of New York could at once buy it all. Suppose 
they should do so. They would own it then, as the word 
<oW is commonly used, and by a much better title than 
many of the present proprietors. A man may do what 
he likes with his own. Suppose these gentlemen, if they 
were so minded, could afford to keep the island solely for 
a hunting ground. They would have the right then, I 
.suppose, to say to the five million Irish people there :— 
"We have bought this ground and would like to have the 
use of it ; you will please vacate the premises ; get off 
the island altogether ; we don't propose to farm it here 
any more, and don't want any of you here." And they 



65 

would have the further right, I suppose, to call for a coer- 
cion act to put them in possession. They could not do 
this you say. Do you mean simply that they could not 
do it in fact, or that they would not have the right to do 
it ? I think you will have to say that they would not 
have the right. Then it must be that the occupants of 
the soil have some right to remain there, and that, there- 
fore, a man cannot acquire the same right in land that he 
may have in some other things. All absolute rights 
come from God, and from Him alone. God made the 
earth, and then made men to live on it, and they have a 
Divine right to live on it, wherever He in His wisdom 
placed them. He not only gave them the right to live on 
it, but one of the most solemn commands He has given 
them is that they shall live on it, and not only live on it, 
but increase ^nd multiply thereon. What are called rights 
in land, as to purchase, are merely privileges, granted by 
society for the good of all, to encourage economy, pru- 
dence and industry, but society can in no way grant to 
any man such a right in land as will prevent other peo- 
ple from living. There are certain things which God 
does not give a man the right to grant to another, such as 
life, liberty and honor. Any contract by which he under- 
takes to do that is void by Divine law. Also, society 
itself, has declared that there are a great many contracts 
void by human law. As, if you had not free will in con- 
tracting, if you were at the time under age, or intoxicated 
or insane ; or generally, if you were you a married wo- 
man ; or if you were deceived in the matter, or made a 
mistake in a certain sense ; or an agreement to work for 
an indefinite time ; or to not marry ; or to not enforce 
your legal rights ; or to sell land, unless the contract is in 
writing ; or to not claim the statute of limitations. In 
some places women's contracts to work in mines or fac- 



66 

tories or fields cannot be enforced, also, as to contracts 
made on Sunday, and so on, in other words it is not the 
law, that people are always bound by whatever contract 
they make. Also, it is not the law that owners of land 
have an absolute right to do what they please with it, to, 
under every circumstance, rent it to whom they please, 
or on what terms they please and for such time as they 
please. The law frequently interferes with owners of 
mines and says, you shall not work them as you please, 
but as the law thinks proper ; therefore regulations are 
made to protect the workers against the greed of the 
owners. The law has the same right to interfere in the 
matter of contracts between landlord and tenant ; that is, 
it has a right to interfere when the interests of humanity 
or the good of society demand it. When in any society 
a large class of people is in constant danger of being 
starved to death, solely, because of unjust land laws, then 
it is the right and the duty of society to change those laws, 
and step in between the landlord and tenant, and fix what 
shall be a proper rent for the land. Land is simply 
capital, bringing a certain interest annually in the way of 
rent. Do not all legislatures everywhere fix what inter- 
est capital shall have annually, when the capital exists in 
the shape of money ? Why may they not do the same, 
with greater right when it exists in the shape of land ! I 
am speaking now entirely from the standpoint of the only 
law which the landlords themselves recognize in the mat- 
ter, and by that very law there is a perfect right to limit 
their control of the land just so far as the good, not of a 
certain class alone, but of the whole, as a whole, requires. 
The State has a legal right to condemn the title to any 
particular land whenever it is needed for the public good. 
It is done in our own States every day, for highways, rail- 
roads, canals, streets, parks, and so on ; the only question 



^7 

being: — "Has a proper occasion arisen for the exercise of 
the power ?" In this country this construction of rights 
has been fully recognized. A railroad charter is re- 
cognized as a contract between the railroad company 
and the State; the constitution of the United States 
declares that no law shall be made impairing the 
obligation of contracts, yet notwithstanding this, it 
has been held that the State may interfere and fix 
the charge the railroad company may demand for the 
use of its property, because of the fact that the 
public good requires it. It may be said that there 
is a difference here, because the railroad company does 
not own the land it passes over, but has there merely a 
right of way, but the case has arisen where warehouse 
companies that own their houses and lands, sought to fix 
exhorbitant rates for storage, and the Supreme Court of 
the United States says, that where the public good de- 
mands it, the State may fix the rates these warehousemen 
may charge for the use of their own property. This in- 
terference is by virtue of what in law is known as the 
authority of eminent domain, the right which the people 
or government retain over the estates of individuals to 
retake the same for public use. 

The whole world outside of a handful of land 
monopolists in England is fully convinced that it is 
the duty of the legislature to remodel the land law of 
Ireland so as to give the farmers a chance to live. Eng- 
land, anxious for any excuse for refusing to do justice to 
Ireland says : — "Suppose we do give relief to the three 
million farmers ; that does not provide for the three mil- 
lion laborers, therefore your plan is incomplete and must 
be rejected." We answer, give us our own parliament 
and we'll take care of our own people. We'll consent 
to emigration when we know that by so doing we 



68 

are not strengthening the hand that smites us. 

How to Get Relief. 

Having, as I hope, shown that it is the land law of 
Ireland which is the immediate bane of Irish prosperity, 
and not any inherent defect in the people themselves, and 
that the legislature has the right to interfere in the mat- 
ter, the question then comes : "How can we secure this 
legislation ?" 

We are entitled to use every means in our power to 
accomplish this end. We are bound, of course, to begin 
with a simple demand. If that is refused, we may then 
proceed with more and more earnestness until we come 
to the point where all means short of force are exhaust- 
ed. If that is needed, we may use force to any extent 
required, even to that of sweeping out of existence all 
who bar the way to our just demands, provided we have 
a reasonable hope of success. 

If the people who are suffering from the land law I 
have described were in a free country, or under a just 
government, the matter of obtaining relief would be easy 
enough, but it is a demand of Ireland from England, and 
we all know what that means. England is to Ireland as 
a strong man to another whom he has first felled by a foul 
blow, then bound and robbed, yet who by circumstances 
are compelled to remain in the presence of each other. 
The brutal bully fears to loose the bonds. It is not a 
necessity of the role of the conqueror. Rome conquered 
nations, and lived with them in peace, but Rome fought 
with honor and ruled with justice. England does neither. 
For Ireland to obtain justice from England, an almost 
superhuman effort is necessary. The first thing, of course, 
is for the Irish people in Ireland to be determined in the 
matter. 1 think we may rest easy as to that part of the 



6 9 

work. It is conceded by all that the people of Ireland 
never made a grander effort for their rights than they are 
now making. The enthusiasm of the repeal days of the 
great O'Connell was not greater than now obtains in 
Ireland, and there is a spirit of courageous hopefulness 
and determined resolution animating the Irish people in 
this struggle beyond anything ever known before. Re- 
member that in O'Connell's time the people were still 
wearing the chains of the penal laws. Remember that 
for fifty years now they have enjoyed personal liberty, 
that young Ireland is educated and half Americanized, that 
it reads, reflects and thinks, and you know that when the 
people think tyrants tremble. Ireland will do its duty at 
home, of that you may be assured. The next thing is for 
her sons to do their duty abroad. We in this great land 
of America have a double task before us. We must first 
give of our means to carry on the contest at home. That 
is the least of our duties. Our greatest duty is to enlist 
in our behalf the power of 

The Great American Nation. 

When I say it is our duty to enlist this power in our 
behalf, I do not mean alone its moral power; that, thank 
God, we already possess. The long roll of States from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, whose Legislatures have lifted 
their voices in our behalf shows that the sympathy of the 
American people is with us in this movement. It furnishes a 
crushing reply to the mouthingsof that British Judge who 
taunted the "Traversers" with the declaration that their 
policy had no support in this country. But we need more 
than this. We need a declaration from the general govern- 
ment, and that declaration, backed by the naval and 
military, power of this country if necessary. England can 
not object to this as improper interference in her domestic 
affairs. England has often interfered in the domestic 



7o 

affairs of European nations in the alleged interest of 
humanity, that great numbers of people were being unjustly 
and harshly dealt with. Ireland has a right now to ask 
a similar interference in its behalf by the United States. 
She has a right to expect that if all else fail, America will 
stretch forth its hand to help her. Nothing is better es- 
tablished than 

Ireland's Claims Upon America. 

Nine hundred years before Columbus pointed his 
caravels westward the Irish sailor St. Brendan had 
reported the discovery of a great land across the Atlantic. 
The Norsemen knew of it and called it Irland it Mikla, 
the greater Ireland. The Italian geographers knew of 
it, and Toscanelli, on the map which was prepared ex- 
pressly for the first voyage of Columbus, marked it "terra 
di San Borondon," St. Brendan's land; and it is recorded 
that the first of Columbus' sailors who set foot upon the 
new world was named Patrick Maguire. More Irishmen 
followed. In 1649, 45,000 came, driven out of Ireland by 
the Cromwellian persecutions. 1689 an Irish colony 
came to Maryland, among them the Caroll family, which 
gave the celebrated signer of the declaration of American 
Independence, Charles Caroll, of Carollton. In 1689 they 
colonized North Carolina, and, in seven years after, one of 
their number, Mr. James Moore, led the people in revolt 
against the oppressions of the proprietary government, 
established their independence, and was honored by the 
people in being elected Governor, the first people's Gov- 
ernor of North Carolina. 

In 1699 a large Irish emigration came to Pennsyl- 
vania, which gave to America many of the leaders in the 
movement for American Independence. In 17 10 they 
came to Virginia and established there the McDonnells, 



7i 

Breckenridges, McDuffies, Magruders and McKennas of 
that State. 

In 1729, at Philadelphia the Irish arrivals outnumber- 
ed ten to one all others from Europe combined. In 1729 
they came also to Cape Cod; with them Charles Clinton 
and family from which came De Witt Clinton of New 
York. 

In 1737 they colonized South Carolina and gave to 
this country Rutledge, Calhcun and, later, Andrew Jack- 
son, that "old Hickory" Andrew Jackson whom you 
know some folks are voting for yet for President. One 
of the early South Carolina historians said that: " Of all 
other countries none has furnished the province with so 
many inhabitants as Ireland." 

In 1 746 they went in great numbers with Boone and 
settled Kentucky and the most popular soldier in that 
land in the early days was Major Hugh McGrady. 

From the earliest days they had been settling in all the 
other States. Victims all of them, in a strictly personal 
sense, of English injustice, you may imagine they were 
foremost and loudest in the call for American Independ- 
ence. It is admitted that the Irish John Rutledge "was 
the first man whose eloquence roused South Carolina to 
the level of resistance." When the Stamp Act was 
passed, Dr. Franklin, communicating from London with 
Charles Thompson, one of the Irish settlers in Pennsyl- 
vania, afterwards secretary of the Continental Congress, 
wrote:— "The sun of liberty is set. The Americans 
must light now the lamps of industry and economy," but 
Thompson, like a genuine Celt sent back the ringing an- 
swer: "Be assured that we shall light torches of quite 
a different sort." John Hancock, whose magnificent 
autograph marshals the signatures to the declaration like. 



72 

a standard bearer at the head of a column was the son of 
Honora O'Flaherty, and his people were lords in Gahvav 
for centuries before their advent in America. 

Ireland was well represented in the Continental Con- 
gress, and among the singers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence as well as the Constitution of the United States. 

One-sixth of the singers of the declaration and one- 
sixth of the signers of the Constitution that we know of 
were. Irishmen. 

I have led you one by one through all these facts 
that you may be the better prepared for the m on- 
astonishing declaration I am about to make. 

Of the Continental army which achieved the Inde- 
pendence of the United States, one-third of the active 
officers and one-half of the rank and tile, were of Irish 
birth or immediate Irish descent. 

The first secretary of war of the United States was 
Gen. Henry Knox, an Irishman. 

One of the first Brigadier Generals of the Continental 
army was Gen. Sullivan, a son of an Irish schoolmaster, of 
Limerick. Another was Richard Montgomery, of New 
York, an Irishman. The celebrated Mad Anthony 
Wayne, so famous as the Murat of the American army, 
was an Irishman. The man who, answering the anxious 
inquiry as to whether it was possible to capture a certain 
fort, said, " I'll take it to-night or Molly Stark will be a 
widow in the morning," was Major General John Stark, 
an Irishman from Londonderry. I need not tell you that 
he "held the fort." I could tell you of Hand, Moylan, 
Dillon, and fifty more, but, not now. 

Ireland was represented in the navy too. The first 
naval capture made in the name of the United States, 



73 

was by O'Brien, from Cork. Fennimore Cooper, in his 
history of the navy, calls it "the Lexington of the seas; 
the first blow struck on the water after the war of the 
revolution had actually commenced." The first Com- 
modore of the American navy was John Barry, from 
Wexford, where he lived almost to manhood before he 
came to America. One of Barry's proteges in the navy 
was an Irishman, who afterwards became Admiral 
Stewart, whose grandson, Stewart Parnell, is not un- 
known to you. 

Washington not only understood the composition of 
his army but fully appreciated the loyalty of his Irish 
troops. When that terrible night came, when everything 
depended on the fidelity of the sentries, he issued the 
celebrated order, " Put none but Irish or Americans on 
guard to-night." And he put the Irish first, where the}* 
are generally found when there is any fighting to be done. 
Some so-called historians have been base enough to drop 
the word " Irish" in quoting this order, but the original is 
still preserved in Washington and stands there as one of 
the grandest compliments ever paid to the Irish race. 

Nor was it in America alone that the Irish race an- 
swered the call for aid. The Irish brigade in the service 
of France, sought and obtained permission to fight the En- 
glish in America, and, on Southern battle fields shed their 
blood in behalf of American liberty as freely as did their 
brethren in the North. Ireland had her own parliament 
at Dublin then, and though sitting almost within the range 
of English guns, its House of Commons not only refused 
to vote the 45,000 men demanded to fight against Amer- 
ica, but, with characteristic Irish audacity, passed Mr. 
Daly's resolution calling upon the King to discontinue the 
war. 

In the English Parliament, bearding the lion in his 



74 

den, the Irish orators Barre, Burke and Sheridan plead 
for American freedom in words of such magnificent elo- 
quence that they are handed down from generation to 
generation in the school books of this land as the grandest 
utterances ever delivered in behalf of American liberty. 

Of course we boast of all this. Why should we not? 
Is it not something for Irishmen to be proud of that Am- 
erican patriotism was roused in great part by Irish elo- 
quence, American liberty proclaimed in great part In- 
Irish representatives and American independence achieved 
in great part by Irish arms? 

So much importance did America at one time attach 
to the Irish people that the first continental Congress sent 
an address to them, not to Irishmen in America, no appeal 
to them was necessary, but to the Irish people in Ireland, 
explaining to them that America had no hostility to Ire- 
land itself, but only to England. 

Franklin while on his diplomatic mission to Europe, 
visited Ireland to obtain the sympathy of the Irish people, 
and reported from London, saying : — "I found them dis- 
posed to be friends of America, in which I endeavored to 
confirm them, with the expectation that our growing 
weight, might in time be thrown into their scale, and by 
joining our interests with theirs a more equitable treat- 
ment from this nation (England) might be obtained for 
them, as well as for us." 

I could go on for hours citing the services rendered 
by Irishmen to America, but I think I mav stop with this. 
Ireland accepted the pledge of America and declared 
itself for American independence. England was obliged 
to recognize the American Parliament, but she glutted her 
vengeance on Ireland. She quickly destroyed the Irish 
Parliament, and did her best to destrov the Irish people 



75 

Ireland from the depths of her dungeon, loaded with 
chains, sends now her "address" to America. She has no 
fear as to the manner of its reception. She presents it 
not with the nervous dread of an alien suppliant, but with 
the proud humility of an unfortunate companion in arms, 
appealing to the generosity of a former comrade to whom 
fortune has been kinder in the distribution of her favors. 
She has another reason for this hope. There is a tradi- 
tion in the old land that St. Malachy, prophet Saint of 
Ireland, had a vision ages ago, in which he saw a Western 
fleet with bannered stars, coming to the deliverance of 
Ireland. 

"They come from the west on the ocean's crest, 
With stars their prows adorning, 
And their thunder's roar on the Mayo shore, 
Proclaims my Erin's morning!" 

The people on the Western coast firmly believe this 
prophecy, and at Easter-tide they flock to the holy well 
of the Reek and sing the ancient song as they sit with 
their faces toward the western sea, and their last prayer, 
in bidding adieu to their children departing for America, 
is, that they may return with "St. Malachy's men." 

Alliances. 

We are taught thus, even by tradition, to look to the 
west for help and, through the blood of Erin's sons shed 
for liberty here, we have a right to demand it. And, oh! 
my brothers, in this struggle, let us be careful where we 
seek for aid. After the mercy of God, the justice of our 
cause and the valor of our race, let us put our trust in 
this gallant land of freedom, closing our ears to the whis- 
perings of that dark, malignant power which is corrupt- 
ing the suffering people of every land in Europe, aye ! 
even our own. 

Let us put our trust in this great American nation, 



7 6 

whose land we were the first to discover; whose soil we 
were among the first to possess ; whose liberty we were 
among the first to proclaim ; whose independence we 
were among the first to achieve ; whose constitution we 
were among the first to form, and whose union, our Cor- 
corans and Meaghers and Shields and Sheridans, with 
half a million Irish soldiers at their backs, were among 
the foremost to preserve. 

Let us remember that when the sun of the Roman 
Empire went down in barbarian darkness it was our land 
that held aloft the beacon light of knowledge, civiliza- 
tion, refinement, eloquence, poetry and art, all crowned 
with the supernatural glory of the christian faith, and that 
as sons of that glorious land it is our duty to watch with 
jealous care that the shining splendor of that ancient rec- 
ord receive, now, no blot or blemish. 

Let us, in even these terrible days, show to the world 
that the Irish race, christianized by St. Patrick, victori- 
ous under Brian of the tributes, grandy belligerent under 
its mediaeval chiefs, electrified with the heroism of its 
Wolf-Tone's, Sarsfield's and Emmets ; effulgent with 
the eloquence of its Grattan's and Burke's, its Lalor- 
Shields and Brinsley Sheridans ; ennobled by the achieve- 
ments of its later representatives in every quarter of the 
globe ; though besieged with temptation, wasted by fam- 
ine, blasted by war, crushed by oppression is still worthy 
of its ancient name and holds itself now, as of old, proud- 
ly above all contact with dishonor. 

We cannot descend to the commune. The hand 

which for ages past knew so well how to wield the hero's 

sword, cannot stoop now to clutch the torch of the 

■petroleuse. True, with us now, all is lost but honor, but 

With Honor Saved all May Yet be Won. 

The haughty English lords laugh at such words. 



77 

They point to their massive forts, that threaten every land; 
to their iron ships, which darken every sea, and cry : 
"Lo ! we are here. We, the powerful. Who shall with- 
stand us !" So spake the pride of Tyre, exclaiming: "I 
am God, and sit in the chair of God, in the heart of the 
sea." Yet she became "a spoil of the nations ; the dust 
was scraped from her, and she was made like a smooth 
rock, a drying place for nets in the midst of the sea." So 
spoke the pride of Greece in the age of Pericles, yet her 
palaces became desolate. So thought the lords of Car- 
thage, yet her market places were turned to wastes of 
sand. So sang the poets of the Augustan age, yet the 
Rome of the Caesars lives only in ruins. So discoursed 
the haughty Moors, in choicest Arabic as they sauntered 
through the gilded courts of the Alhambra with a half 
pitying smile for the ragged refugees, starving in the 
Asturias after seven hundred years of fruitless war, yet, 
of the haughty Moors and their Spanish domination, noth- 
ing but a faded memory now remains, while the sons of 
the once Asturian exiles are now lords of Spain, and, for 
four hundred years, have not only proudly waved the 
flag of Castile over all the land of the Cid, but have 
borne it with honor and glory to every quarter of the 
globe. 

The Celts of Ireland and the Celts of Spain are both 
thoroughbred descendants of the old Ayran stock, the 
conquering blood of the world, and Irish independence 
though long delayed, is nevertheless an ever living thought 
of the Irish people, It is an idea old as the Irish race and 
broad as the flow of Irish blood; a principle as undying 
with them as the love they bear their faith,- as uncom- 
promising as the care with which they guard their honor, 
as immortal as the genius which is the birthright of their 
race. They do well to ever and ever more assert it, for 



78 

so surely as the stars keep to their courses so surely will 
their day of triumph come. 

Men are now living who saw them possess it ; men 
are now living who will see them to regain it. The defeat 
of to-day but binds them closer for the victory of to-morrow, 
The}- have proved themselves indestructible. Firmly 
planted on the principle of independence they cannot but 
be invincible. 

They must demand the act of '82. It is their only 
policy, their only refuge, their only hope, and hoping in 
this they will not hope in vain. 

"If a State submit 
At once, she may be blotted out at once 
And swallowed in the conqueror's chronicle 
"Whereas, in wars of freedom and defense, 
The glory and the grief of battle, won or lost, 
Solders a race together. Yea! though they fail, 
The names of those who fought and fell, are like 
A banked up fire, that flashes out again 
Century after century, after and, at last, 
Will lead them on to victory. 
Like phantoms of the Gods." 

After all this discourse, I know that my younger 
hearers are not yet satisfied. I know they will say : 
"Suppose the work of the League fails, what then ? 
That is the end of this affair, is it not ? If we fail now 
and cannot resort to Nihilism, we may as well abandon 
all further hopes of Ireland !" Oh, no ! my friends, that 
is an impossibilty ! There is only one way in which lost 
nationalities are ever abandoned, and that is when the 
conquering power is so just to the conquered that no cause 
for complaint is left. I am quite free to say that if the 
English Government will ever bring about such a state 
of affairs in Ireland, Irishmen- will accept it. It is a fore- 
gone conclusion, that if there is left no cause for com- 



19 

plaint, then indeed is the agitator's occupation gone. That 
state of affairs will be brought about in Ireland sooner or 
later, and a people who have waited as long as the Irish 
people have done, are not going to, now, or ever abandon 
their claims. It will be a mistake for any of you to 
despair of Ireland's complete success ! There w r as a 
Roman General once, who received the highest honors 
possible for Rome to bestow, simply because at a time 
which seemed to be without hope, he did not despair. He 
did nothing to win those honors except to declare that he 
would not acknowledge that the cause was lost. 

When the day of our triumph comes, and all intelli- 
gent observers admit that it must come, sooner or later, I 
hope you will all be numbered among those who never 
despaired of the ultimate success of the Irish cause. 

You are here in a country now of fifty, soon to be a 
hundred millions of people. You discovered this country ; 
you helped to make it ; you help to direct its action. You 
are more than half of its people ! So long as you are 
the true men you were when you came here, you will put 
this country first, always, in all political contentions, and if 
you ever fail to do it, you will be execrated of all men, and 
by none more than by true Irishmen ; but, if you cannot, 
with the power you have here, compatible with all your 
duties here, sometime secure the just claims of Ireland, 
you are neither Americans nor Irishmen, nor true men of 
any kind whatsoever ! But I know you are men : I know 
you are true men, and that is the reason why I know that 
Ireland will yet be Free ! 



sonvcE 



VICISSITUDES 



OF- 



IRISH INDEPENDENSE 



A SKETCH 



BY 



HON. EDMUND F. DUNNE, LL. D.. 

Ex-Chief Justice of Arizona. 



PUBLISHED BY 

de^otifh: &o oo. 

171 Randolph Street, Chicago, III. 
1881. 

~e>>»;o« 

PRICE 15 CENTS. 



V 



IRELAND. 



RIGHTS.WRONGS AND REMEDIES. 



A LECTURE 

Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind. 

St, Patrick's Day, 1881 



-BY- 



HON. EDMUND F. DUNNE, LL. D., 

Ex-Chief Justice of Arizona. 



Irish Land System.— Ireland under Irish Rule.— Ireland under English 

Mis-Rule.— Irish Talent— The Fraud of 1800, called the "Act of 

Union.'"— Ireland's Claims upon America.— Ireland's 

Ultimate Success Assured. 



PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST 

—OF— 

THE ILLINOIS STATE LAND LEAGUE, 

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PRICE, 25 CENTS. 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1881, by E, P. Dunne, in the 
office ol the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



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